The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has issued new customs rules asking travellers to submit declarations to the customs authority if they carry goods or currencies equivalent to or more than 60,000 Saudi Riyals.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has communicated the new Saudi rules to all authorised dealer (AD) banks of foreign exchange in Bangladesh, directing them to inform their customers travelling to/from the KSA to avoid any penalty.
"However, entitlements of foreign exchange for travelling to the KSA on various grounds by Bangladeshi nationals as enumerated in Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Transactions-2018, Volume 1 and subsequent circulars/circular letters shall remain unchanged," said a notification issued by the central bank on Sunday.
The Saudi rules and regulations require all travellers arriving in or departing from the KSA to submit declarations to the Saudi Customs Authority if they carry goods such as cash money, financial instruments, gold bullions, precious metals, stones or jewellery equivalent to or more than 60,000 Saudi Riyals, according to the notification.
"We've issued the circular to raise awareness among the people about the new customs rules of KSA," a senior BB official told the FE.
The central bank has issued the instruction in line with the advices from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he added.
In another circular, the central bank has asked the AD banks to issue necessary directives to their branches concerned not to open letter of credit (LC) to import goods, excepting approved ones, via land customs stations.
Currently, the BB sees a tendency of importing different products which are not on the approved list through the land custom stations, which is unacceptable, the circular added.
