Bangladesh Bank has officially given the green light for banks to trade foreign currency at freely negotiated rates, but there’s a catch. An unofficially imposed mechanism has upset the foreign exchange market, undermining the intent of liberalisation.

The dollar jumped to a seven-week high on Friday and was on track to post its best week since September 2022 after a surprisingly strong jobs report for September led traders to cut bets that the Federal Reserve will make further 50-basis-point rate cuts.

Come January there won’t be any volatility in the foreign exchange market -- was the overarching message from the government in the past couple of months. January has arrived, and the situation is dicey as before.

The central bank yesterday ordered six banks to spend 50 per cent of the profits they had earned from their foreign exchange businesses unethically between May and June for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. 

Foreign currency transactions through cards hit an all-time high of Tk 356 crore in May due to a rise in the number of travellers going abroad.

The Bangladesh Bank today asked banks to suggest uniform exchange rates of the taka against the US dollar in order to bring back the stability in the country’s foreign exchange market.

There is nothing to panic about the current volatility in the foreign exchange market, said Mustafizur Rahman, a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue.

The taka faced less depreciation against the US dollar compared to other South Asian currencies in the last one year, eroding the export competitiveness of Bangladesh against its peers.