Cenbank power outage halts day's cheque clearing
The disruption was caused by a power failure, says Bangladesh Bank Spokesperson and Executive Director Arief Hossain Khan
A power outage at the Bangladesh Bank yesterday disrupted clearing operations across the banking sector, forcing the suspension of cheque settlements and electronic fund transfers for the day.
The disruption, which began around 3pm, caused all commercial banks to halt transactions processed through the central clearing system.
In a notification, the central bank said, "Due to unavoidable technical issues, high-value and regular-value cheque settlements under the Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS) for 04/12/25 could not be completed. All BACPS transactions for today (Thursday) have been declared abandoned. Settlement reports for BEFTN Session 1 and Session 2 will be provided later."
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Bangladesh Bank Spokesperson and Executive Director Arief Hossain Khan told TBS that the disruption was caused by a power failure.
"NPSB is operational and transactions can be made through it. The problem started due to an electricity fault. We expect RTGS and other systems to be restored soon," he said.
A senior central bank official said repeated power outages affected the bank's data centre.
"The power went off several times by noon. The UPS provides around 10 minutes of backup, after which the load shifts to generators, but the generator did not start. As a result, all systems went down and the data centre shut completely," he said.
The official added that repair work was ongoing and NPSB had been activated to allow partial transactions, but cheque clearing had been abandoned for the day.
Asked whether the disruption would create a cash reserve ratio (CRR) deficit for banks, the central bank official said, "The house has been abandoned. Today's transactions will be accounted for tomorrow (Friday)."
Executives from several commercial banks confirmed that they were unable to process any transactions through the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system or the Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BEFTN).
A senior official at a private bank said, "Since midday, the Bangladesh Bank server has been down. RTGS and BEFTN did not work. We don't know our current account position because the system is completely down. The central bank has asked us to attend the office on Friday to resolve the issue."
A managing director of a commercial bank added, "The central bank has notified that all of today's transactions will be executed on Friday morning. Since it is a weekend, there should be no complications."
