Bangladeshi Taka (BDT)

About the Bangladeshi Taka

The Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) is the official currency of Bangladesh, written with the symbol ৳ and issued by Bangladesh Bank, the country's central bank. One taka divides into 100 poisha, and ISO 4217 assigns the currency the alphabetic code BDT and the numeric code 050. Bangladesh Bank has managed the taka's exchange rate against the US dollar through a series of reforms since 2024, moving the currency progressively toward a market-determined rate.

Facing sustained depreciation pressure and a balance-of-payments deficit, Bangladesh Bank realigned the taka to a market-clearing mid-rate of Tk. 117 per US dollar on 8 May 2024, adopting an interim crawling peg anchored to a currency basket aligned with the Real Effective Exchange Rate index. In its Monetary Policy Statement for July-December 2026, Bangladesh Bank describes its policy as a "flexible, market-determined exchange rate regime," while still intervening by purchasing foreign currency and publishing a daily transaction-based FX Reference Rate alongside the interbank rate.

Bangladesh Bank was established on 16 December 1971 under the Bangladesh Bank Order, 1972, succeeding the East Pakistan branch offices of the former State Bank of Pakistan, which had opened in the territory in July 1948. The first taka banknote, a one-taka note bearing a map of Bangladesh, was issued on 4 March 1972, months after Bangladesh's independence, establishing the taka as the country's own currency.

Remittances from Bangladeshi migrant workers are a foreign-currency inflow that Bangladesh Bank links directly to exchange-rate policy: remittances grew 19.07 percent to USD 32.75 billion in July 2025-May 2026, a rise the central bank attributes partly to a more market-oriented, competitive exchange rate. Bangladesh Bank also purchased a net USD 6.43 billion from the foreign-exchange market in FY2026, up to 28 June 2026, helping to lift gross international reserves to USD 31.74 billion.

Bangladesh Bank issues banknotes from ৳5 to ৳1,000, plus ৳1 and ৳2 notes, alongside coins from 1 poisha to ৳5. A note series issued in 2025 — including the ৳100 note on 12 August 2025 and a redesigned ৳1,000 note on 1 June 2025 — replaced the portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman used on those denominations with heritage sites and national motifs, such as the Sixty Dome Mosque, the Sundarbans and the National Monument at Savar.