BB asks banks to lower LC margin for specific products

Staff Reporter :
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) on Tuesday directed all scheduled banks to relax the cash margin rate against the opening of Letters of Credits (LCs) for 10 categories of products importsto keep manufacturing sector productive.
The products include industrial and industry-related spare parts, chemical and ancillary products, textile raw materials, computer, laptop and its spare parts, plastic products, UPS and IPS machineries.
In a circular issued to this effect on Tuesday (20 June), the central bank asked all banks to fix the opening margin rate based on banker-customer relations.
Earlier, importers had to pay 75 per cent LC margin on imports of these goods.

If the bank intends to import goods without acquiring any LC margin from its customers, it is permitted to do so.
However, for imports of other products, LC margins of 100 percent and 75 percent will still be applicable.
Apart from this, products including baby food, essential food products, medicines and equipment, fuel, directly imported capital machinery, raw materials for production-oriented local industries are currently enjoying LC margin facilities based on banker-customer relations.