The ministry of finance sits today (Thursday) with five private banks to apprise them of the procedure of handling the automated challans.
The meeting will be held in the city's Institute of Public Finance (IPF).
Challan is an official form or document, a piece of paperwork, citation, etc used to credit money to one's bank account through a form, generally used as a receipt for payment or delivery.
The automated challans will be introduced from September 01.
This is the first time the government is partnering with the private banks to promote the challans.
Initially five private banks will participate in it, which will be expanded to all 59 banks later this year.
The five privately-owned commercial banks are: Dhaka Bank, Bank Asia, Premier Bank, Trust Bank and One Bank.
The challans are being seen as the largest way of remitting money to the government exchequer by citizens.
Abdur Rouf Talukder, secretary at the finance division, will attend the meeting as the chief guest. Tahmina Begum, the Institute's director general, will take part in the programme as the special guest.
Md Habibur Rahman, programme director at the public expenditure management strengthening programme, will preside over the function.
Officials familiar with the development at the finance division told the FE that around 50 participants from five commercial banks, Sonali Bank and the Bangladesh Bank are expected to join the programme.
They will attend the day-long interactive sessions, where experts will deliver their lectures.
Earlier, the finance ministry issued a circular allowing the transaction of treasury challan by private banks along with the central bank and Sonali Bank from the first day of September.
The ministry considers the challan to be the largest instrument by shares to the national exchequer.
In the fiscal year, 2018-19, 14.8 million challans were transacted by nine branches of the Bangladesh Bank and 686 branches of the state-owned Sonali Bank.
The money mobilised through the challan amounted to over Tk 4.34 trillion during the last fiscal year.
The officials said this will the "automatic challan system," which will help expedite the mobilisaiton of the different fees, fines and charges.
This will help stop fake challan as well, they said.
Mr Rahman said the government receives the fund two or three days later after the transaction through the challan. But this time it will be based on "real-time".
People use challan as the biggest mode of submitting money to the government's consolidated fund to enjoy different services ranging from agriculture to utility services provided by state agencies.
jasimharoon@yahoo.com
