The New Nation - Internet Edition

With the passing of years our foreign exchange trade has kept growing in volume and complexity. Especially during the past twenty years our exports, imports and inward remittance have increased tremendously, so did the corruption and mismanagement in foreign exchange management of the country. In fact, Bangladesh Bank has utterly failed in managing the foreign exchange affairs of the land in an effective way.

Observing the perpetual weakness in our foreign exchange management system, former Bangladesh Bank governor Dr. Farasuddin attempted to bring discipline into the foreign exchange management system of the country. As the export related data provided by Export Promotion Bureau lacks credibility, for the first time in the history of Bangladesh, the BB governor took personal initiative to make export database in the central bank of the country to track national exports in order to get a comprehensive view regarding export proceeds, volume, unrepatriated proceeds, export discounts, short shipped values, export commodity nature and destination ports, etc. At his behest, the IT Department of Bangladesh Bank developed new export-matching software.

But subsequently it was found that the aforementioned software has some flaws. It did not provide any space for short shipment data of export. Due to this mistake the export related discount couldn't be ascertained properly. From then on the export data entry work proceeded in such a halfhearted manner that it could be said the dream of national export database of Dr. Farasuddin has died in reality.

It is expected of the present Governor that he shall take necessary steps in correcting the export software of BB so that the ambitious project of his predecessor would not get buried before its maturity. And we must not forget without effective export data management there could not be any effective export management for the country.

Ali Ahmed

Dhaka