DHAKA, July 15 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has slashed the standing deposit facility (SDF) by 50 basis points to 8.0 percent to make the country's call-money market vibrant.
The Monetary Policy Department of the central bank issued a circular in this regard on Tuesday, saying the latest change in the SDF will be effective from Wednesday.
The SDF allows affluent banks to park surplus funds with the BB overnight at a rate 1.50 basis points below the repo rate.
Md Ezazul Islam, a BB executive director, said the decision is to discourage the growing use of SDF instruments by the major commercial banks having surplus funds and vibrate the call-money market further.
He said the decision will help immensely ailing banks as they will have more access to emergency loans from the call-money market to fill their asset-liability mismatch.
The total SDF balance of the country's well-off banks in June reportedly increased to 727.30 billion taka (5.98 billion U.S. dollars).
According to the BB data, the accumulated figure was 158 percent higher than the previous month's count of 282.22 billion taka.
On the other hand, the BB data showed 887.90 billion taka was transacted on the call-money market in June 2025, down by around 15 percent from May's figure of 1.04 trillion taka. (1 U.S. dollar equals 121 taka) ■
