Bangladesh is facing an economic crisis under the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, as banks are struggling to release new currency notes into circulation, according to local media reports on Monday.

The crisis emerged after a political shift that saw former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina removed from power following a violent uprising last year.

According to the Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo, the crisis is made worse because the new currency notes and coins — which feature the image of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — are not being released into the market. As a result, people are experiencing financial difficulties due to a shortage of usable money. Shops and banks are being overwhelmed with old, damaged currency notes. Last month, the central bank directed all scheduled banks to stop providing new notes to the public.

In response, Bangladesh Bank instructed its branches holding new notes to refrain from exchanging them. Instead, they were told to keep the fresh notes in reserve. "Millions of banknotes with Bangabandhu's picture are still lying in the vaults of various banks. The mint does not have the capacity to cancel all the notes at once and print new ones. To reduce the suffering of the people, the notes that have been printed should be released into the market," said Ziauddin Ahmed, former Managing Director of Mint.
 

After the Central Bank stopped issuing previously printed notes based on a government directive, it suffered a major financial loss—about 15,000 crore Bangladeshi taka worth of notes featuring Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were already printed but couldn’t be used. Several Central Bank officials, speaking anonymously to Prothom Alo, said the decision came from high-level government instructions.

Other bank employees told the newspaper that suddenly stopping the use of these notes created a cash shortage in the market. The printed notes were wasted, which led to more problems for customers. As a result, banks and ATMs began distributing old, worn-out notes, adding to public inconvenience. "I withdrew 20,000 taka from one Bank ATM with my Dhaka Bank card. Out of these, three 1,000 taka notes are almost unusable. Now, even if I try to return these notes, the banks do not want to accept them," said a customer.