The matter of taka-rupee bilateral exchange and use of a dual currency card by Bangladeshi and Indian nationals was brought up at a meeting of Bangladesh’s National Economic Council chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, as per Bangladeshi media reports.

The Indian high commission to Sri Lanka recently organised a familiarisation event in Colombo on the use of the Indian rupee for bilateral trade settlements. The discussion focused on using national currencies for transactions. Meanwhile, there are reports of India and Bangladesh mulling over doing away with the US dollar as the currency of exchange.

The move would also reduce the pressure on foreign currency, given the large volume of payments to India, Bangladesh Bank governor Abdur Rouf Talukder reportedly told the meeting.

The development, if fructifies, is expected to reduce the cost of trade as well as losses due to rupee-dollar and taka-dollar differences. The exchange rate is expected to be derived from the two currencies and would not be worked backwards from the exchange rate of the US dollar.

The latest bilateral deliberations between India and Bangladesh took place on the sidelines of the G20 finance chiefs meeting in Bengaluru on February 24-25.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)