Staff Reporter :
The currency notes in a new design without Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s image are expected to hit the market by the end of April or early May.
These new notes will bear the signature of the current Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur, according to the bank’s spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan.
The new notes will be available before Eid-ul-Adha in June. The government is working to remove potentially all links with the ousted Awami League regime, in a bid to leave behind the autocratic legacy.
Explaining the reason for this, Arif said on Wednesday that a large amount of notes printed in the previous design still remain in the central bank.
“So new design notes are not being printed at the moment to prevent wastage of money.”
Bangladesh Bank will exchange new notes on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr from Mar 19 to 25.
The new notes of Tk 5, Tk 20, and Tk 50 will be exchanged in a special measure through 80 branches of different scheduled banks in Dhaka and the central bank offices on working days. However, the same person cannot collect new notes more than once.
The new notes can be collected from 80 branches of different banks in Dhaka, Savar, Keraniganj, Narayanganj, Munshiganj, and Gazipur, according to a statement issued by the central bank.
The government is on track to release new notes worth Tk5, Tk20 and Tk50 on 19 March ahead of the Eid-ul-Fitr festival. The notes would contain the image of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as they were printed before authorities decided to remove the image in new notes.
Reprinting the notes by excluding Sheikh Mujib’s image would result in the wastage of huge amount of public money, and given the present shaky situation of the national economy, the central bank wants to avoid such wastage, Arif Hossain Khan said.
