Business Desk :
Employees of banks and non-bank financial institutions will not be able to travel abroad from now on under expenses paid for by their employers as the Bangladesh Bank widened its restriction to stop the foreign currency reserves from sliding further.
In a notice yesterday, banks were instructed to refrain from releasing foreign exchanges on account of registration or participation fee for attending training, seminar and workshop abroad. The restriction is applicable to officials of banks and financial institutions.
The central bank also advised the authorised dealer banks to refrain from executing transactions for the employees of banks and financial institutions operating in Bangladesh.
On May 18, the BB said its officials and employees will not be able to make any kind of foreign trips except for some emergency purposes.
In order to ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves, the government, on May 11, decided to stop foreign trips of its officials and postponed the implementation of less important projects that require imports.
On May 16, the Finance Division said the employees of autonomous, state-owned, semi-government organisations and state-owned banks and financial institutions can’t go on overseas trips.
Reserves fell to $41.92 billion last week owing to soaring imports. It was $46.15 billion on December 31.
