The technical problems that have affected interbank transactions through the Electronic Funds Tansfer (EFT) system will be fixed by Sunday, said Bangladesh Bank.
Banks started facing the problem in carrying out interbank transactions from April 13.
"The electronic funds transfer service will resume on Sunday next as concerned teams are working on it after identifying the problems," said BB's chief spokesperson Serajul Islam on Thursday.
While taking about the origin of the problem, Islam said, following an announcement on 7-day bank closure until April 21 due to lockdown, bank officials selected April 22 as the next transaction day in the banking software.
Afterward, the cabinet gave instructions to keep banks open during the lockdown. But the input bank officials gave could not be reverted due to technical barrier.
Besides, two central bank data centres faced BTCL connection issues, which aided the problem at Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BATCH) too, the official added. "This delayed the EFT service resumption."
On April 12, the government gave announcement to enforce 7-day strict lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 from April 14-21. All government and private offices were supposed to remain closed as per restrictions. Bangladesh Bank on the same day announced bank closure during the lockdown.
However, following an instruction of the Cabinet Division the next day, the central bank asked all banks to operate on a limited scale during lockdown.
Banks are now open from 10am to 1pm to facilitate financial transactions. However, the bank authorities are allowed to conduct internal official activities until 2:30pm.
While talking to Bangladesh Post, a commercial bank official said their general transactions such as deposits and withdrawal of money by clients were not affected.
'Clients were depositing and withdrawing money as usual. But we are facing problems in case of encashing cheques of other banks," said an official of Bank Asia's Paltan branch.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Bank's website address www.bb.org.bd was not working on Tuesday (April 13) morning. This site, no-one can be reached on mobile, tab, laptop and desktop.
In this regard, Executive Director Sirajul Islam also said, there are many official links with the website of Bangladesh Bank.
Inter-bank electronic cheque transaction and fund transfer activities through Bangladesh Bank have been suspended since April 13 due to the disconnection of an optical fibre cable between two data centres of the central bank
The disconnection between the two data centres -- located at Motijheel and Mirpur -- has stopped the function of the central bank's Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BATCH), which is dedicated to clear cheque and settle transactions through electronic fund transfer (EFT), said an official, who has knowledge about this development.
Two technology-related solution teams -- Microsoft and VMware -- have been working to resolve the issue since Tuesday, he said.
