A consortium of eighteen private commercial banks in Bangladesh recently entered into an agreement with the Bangladesh Bank (BB) to access funds through the central bank’s long-term financing facility (BB-LTFF) designed to support export-oriented entities.

The participating banks include Mutual Trust Bank, City Bank, Bank Asia, Jamuna Bank, UCB, Southeast Bank, Trust Bank, NCC Bank, Premier Bank, Pubali Bank, Midland Bank, Shahjalal Islami Bank, Exim Bank, Standard Bank, Prime Bank, Dhaka Bank, Brac Bank, and Eastern Bank.

The signing ceremony took place at the BB headquarters in Dhaka.

This initiative by the central bank aims to provide private sector firms, particularly those engaged in export-oriented manufacturing, with the ability to secure loans in US dollars for the acquisition of equipment and services necessary for their sustainable operations.

These loans, which may reach up to US $ 10 million, will be disbursed in accordance with BB’s established guidelines and denominated in US currency.

The central bank has introduced this new financing scheme following the conclusion of the Financial Sector Support Project (FSSP), a collaborative effort between the World Bank and the Bangladesh Bank even if under the FSSP project, local banks extended a total of US $ 273.76 million in financing to 56 industrial sector companies, with US $ 115 million of those disbursed funds having already been repaid, according to a senior official from the central bank.