The Bangladesh Bank on Tuesday restored interbank electronic fund transfer (EFT), said central bank Executive Director and spokesperson Md Serajul Islam.
The function of the central bank's Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) for clearing cheques and settling transactions through EFT were suspended from April 13 due to a technical fault in the optical fibre cable between the data centre at the central bank’s Motijheel office and its data centre at Mirpur.
Although the interbank cheque clearing system was restored from April 18, EFT remained halted till Tuesday.
Customers were facing various difficulties in the last few days amid the countrywide lockdown, as banks were not able to continue the inter-bank transaction services.
“EFT is now operable and we are able to continue the inter-bank transaction services,” said Emranul Huq, managing director of Dhaka Bank.
BACH, the first-ever electronic clearing house in the country, has two components — an automated cheque processing system (ACPS) and the EFT.
In a notice issued on Wednesday, the central bank said that BACH will be operable amid the extended period of lockdown.
Bangladesh Bank has set the transaction period through BACH from 11am to 1:30pm and transaction through Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) from 10am to 1pm.
During the lockdown, banking transactions hours have been set from 10am to 1pm and banks will remain open until 2:30pm except on weekly and government holidays.