International Chamber of Commerce Bangladesh (ICCB) President Mahbubur Rahman on Thursday said Bangladesh has become one of Asia’s most remarkable success stories in recent past.
“Bangladesh is an important market for trade finance within Asia and the Pacific. To remain competitive in today’s changing environment, both clients and financial institutions have to streamline their trade activities,” he said.
The ICCB President was speaking at the closing ceremony of ICC Workshop on ‘Trade Finance and Best Practices in Demand Guarantees,’ organised by ICC Bangladesh, at a hotel in the city, said a press release.
The international trade volume of Bangladesh was US$21 billion in 2005 and the amount went up to more than $95 billion in 2018, Mahbubur Rahman added.
Rahman cautioned that with the growing business complexities, technological changes, market expectations and financial crimes, trade services are becoming increasingly challenging for banks and financial institutions of our country, similar to the other trading nations.
“Time has come to identify the exposure of banks on international bank guarantees; and it seems crucial now to formulate guideline or sets of rules for such guarantees and adopt international rules associated with bank guarantees and standby LCs,” he mentioned.
He noticed that incidences of Trade Based Money Laundering (TBML) remain a growing concern for policy makers and central banks throughout the world.
Though the available sets of Anti Money Laundering (AML) rules are in line with globally accepted standards, there is still a lot of scope to improve their enforcements, he added.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) is working on TBML guideline which is expected to bring positive changes regarding better enforcement of the AML rules, he hoped.
