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Moneychangers want 'Money Exchange Bourse'

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October 23, 2000 

Dhaka-- (UNB)-As money-changing business found a boom, operators of the private forex market demanded setting up of a bourse-like 'Money Exchange Floor' based on account-to-account transactions.

Bangladesh Moneychangers Association (BMCA) yesterday (Sunday) placed the demand before the central bank.

To boost the foreign exchange reserves they also demanded resumption of the 'Auction System' for exchange of foreign currencies as per provision that had been in force until June 1984.

The demands were made when BMCA president Kefayet Ullah Masud and secretary general Abul Hashem respectively submitted a memorandum of the demands to Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Mohammad Farashuddin.

Measures they proposed for encouraging remittance through official channel include setting up of a 'golden gate' at the airport to immigrate non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) who remit at least US$ 10,000 yearly and giving them social status as 'golden citizens.'

"Reintroduction of auction system," they felt, "will determine satisfactory exchange rate and thus discourage hundi transactions."

Besides, beneficiaries at home should be assured of payments within 72 hours of transactions, they suggested, pointing to hundi services that attract remitters to the unofficial conduit.

Hundi system offers Tk 58 per dollar and makes payments at doorstep while banking system offers official rate of the greenback is only Tk 53.

"Besides, procedures delay the payment and both remitters and recipients have to go to banks and pay charges," the BMCA delegation told the governor giving a comparative picture of the money trading.

Reintroducing auction system and offering special social status to potential remitters will bring in additional US$ 1 billion every year, they hoped.

The moneychangers also alerted the authorities and all concerned about any untoward incident on the money market like the one that shook the share market in 1996.