Banks face heavy rush ahead of long Eid holiday

Clients crowd the counters at Agrani Bank's Jatiya Press Club branch yesterday for drawing money ahead of the Eid-ul-Fitr. PHOTO: STAR

Bankers spent a hectic day yesterday as drawing of cash by their clients rose sharply with Eid-ul-Fitr only a few days away.

Bangladesh Bank officials faced tremendous pressure working until night to clear around 7,000 cheques, the number generally ranging between three and four thousand on normal working days.

According to sources, around Tk 2,000 crore was drawn from the banks yesterday with higher rushes to the Motijheel branches of most banks.

"Most of the corporate houses drew a huge cash [yesterday] to pay their employees' salaries. The banks will face the rushes of individual clients on Wednesday, the last working day before Eid," said M Tahmilur Rahman, managing director of Sonali Bank.

There were long queues in the nationalised commercial banks (NCBs) as they do not have automated teller machines (ATMs) like the private and foreign banks.

"In some cases, clients locked in quarrels with the bankers over delay. But we were really under pressure and overburdened," said a bank manager at an NCB in the city's Mirpur.

All banks will remain closed today on the occasion of Shab-e-Qadr.

Meantime, call money rate yesterday hit as high as 12.5 percent for meeting the liquidity demand of the leasing companies. Bank-to-bank call money rate remained comparatively lower at eight percent.

Banks have adequate liquidity, amounting roughly Tk 8,000 crore, which is the main reason the call money rate did not increase for this year. As demand for liquidity is less, banks invested Tk 215 crore in the central bank's reverse repo yesterday and Tk 300 crore on Sunday.

"Despite sanctioning loans, some of the banks could not disburse loans as the borrowers are shy to invest money because of unstable global market and political uncertainty at home, which is another reason behind the adequate deposit in the banks," said a high official of a private bank.

A couple of months ago, the Bangladesh Bank raised the margin for statutory liquidity reserve (SLR) and cash reserve requirement (CRR) in a bid to rein in inflation and ease pressure on imports.

Besides, new generation small banks have also improved their efficiency in fund management that helped them not to borrow money at higher rates from other banks.

"Fund management in the small banks improved significantly as Bangladesh Bank issued guidelines and took other measures to help them in this regard," Khondaker Ibrahim Khaled, managing director of the Pubali Bank Ltd, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The Bangladesh Bank issued 16 crore pieces of different currency, including Tk 2 and Tk 10 notes, on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr.