Call money rate jumps to 43pc
Star Business Report
When the foreign exchange market seems to be stable, interest rate in call money market has started rising as the rate jumped to 43 percent yesterday from the previous day's 30 percent.The rate ranged between 8 percent and 12 percent in recent past. It however began rising from this week. Banking sources said in the last couple of days the central bank withdrew a large amount of money -- Tk 980 crore on Sunday and Tk 488 crore on Monday -- through reverse repo. While the banks yesterday demanded about Tk 700 crore through repo from the BB, but the central bank did not respond to this demand, causing liquidity crisis, the sources added. The sources also said as the dollar market is rather stable now, many of the banks are holding dollars in their reserves. The nationalised commercial banks are major players in the money market. But as they are not getting their payments from Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the banks are suffering from liquidity crisis. BPC owes about Tk 6,000 crore to Sonali Bank. But the BPC has not been making payment since December last year, forcing the cash-hungry Sonali Bank to borrow money from the call money market. Sonali Bank yesterday borrowed about Tk 110 crore. BPC also owes about Tk 5,000 crore to Agrani and Janata banks. Dollar was selling at Tk 72.35 in case of opening Letter of Credit (LC) and Tk 69.15 in the inter-bank foreign exchange market yesterday.
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