The central bank is going to introduce an automated trading platform - Electronic Dealing System for lnterbank Money Market (EDSMoney) - within the third week of March to facilitate liquidity movement in the banking sector.
The decision was taken in a meeting of treasury heads of all the conventional banks, held at the Bangladesh Bank (BB) headquarters in Dhaka on Monday, with BB General Manager Rup Ratan Pine in the chair.
The BB announced a roadmap in the meeting to go for live operations of the real-time automated platform smoothly within the deadline, officials said.
As per the roadmap, all the conventional scheduled banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) are allowed to use the platform from today (Tuesday) for maximum five working days on a trial basis.
The third week of March has been fixed to go for live operations of the EDSMoney after completing parallel testing, software modification and security testing.
The participating banks and NBFIs are eligible to trade interbank overnight call money, short notice deposit (SND) and term deposit by using the platform.
"The EDSMoney will facilitate efficient liquidity movements among the banks and NBFIs," Mr. Pine told the FE while explaining advantages of the automated trading platform for the money market.
He also said it will help implement the BB's monetary policy.
In the meeting, the treasury heads sought the central bank's cooperation to comply with the CRR (cash reserve requirement) rules, if any emergency situation arises.
"The central bank assured us that it will provide the support on case-to-case basis, if necessary," a senior treasury head of a leading private commercial bank (PCB) told the FE while replying to a query.
He also said the BB will allow 30 minutes more for RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) only for banks. Dealing hours will normally start at 10:00 am and close at 4:00 pm.
On the other hand, the central bank is set to meet the treasury heads of the conventional NBFIs at its headquarters on February 23 to discuss different functions of the platform.
