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Banking ‘Pakistani’ style |
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February 1, 2001
Dhaka--(UNB) – Former Bangladesh Bank Governor Lutfar Rahman Sarkar yesterdaylamented that banking activities in the country were still following Pakistani style restricting overall development. “The ideology of having an independent country was not achieved… what happened is banking beneficiaries were extended from 22 families to 2,200,” he told a seminar here yesterday(Wednesday). Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) organised the seminar on “Only Profit or Development: Which Way Bangladesh Banking” at its auditorium with Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Mohammad Farashuddin in the chair. Prof M Amirul Islam Chowdhury of Jahangirnagar University and few managing directors of commercial banks also addressed the function while Dr Ananya Raihan and Mohammad Saidur Rahman of BIBM presented a joint seminar paper. LR Sarkar said poverty is the main problem of the country with 7 crore poor people, including 3 crore extreme poor. “It seems we are sitting on a time bomb,” he said giving a frustrating figure of 40 per cent unemployed educated workforce among the country’s total strength of 5 crore workforce. “Development is not possible leaving this huge number of workforce unemployed,” he said to stress adoption of a banking policy towards utilisation of the huge abandoned manpower that made Japan and South Korea developed nations. He suggested that the banks should go for mass banking instead of class banking to bring the rural areas, where most part of the population live in, under the banking network. LR Sarkar also urged the bankers to totally stop insider lending to eliminate default loan culture. In the system of insider lending, a bank cannot evaluate a project as the entrepreneur is a director of the bank, he said. “Bank branches in the grassroots level must be empowered with lending decisions for the respective locality to gain a good result… lending decisions should be decentralised,” said Uttara Bank MD M Aminuzzaman. He said the banks still take lending decisions from their respective head offices to serve the big parties taking deposits from the rural areas, a strategy that was followed by the Pakistani rulers. It’s true that most part of the resources remained in few hands and now the trend is upward, he added. About banking role in curbing smuggling, the banking practitioner said what role the bankers can play if the law enforcing agencies cannot check it. Dr Farashuddin pointed out that the so-called owners of the private banks could now understand that it’s better to let the bank management do what they like. Most speakers said the banks earned a good profit in 2000 overcoming last 30 years’ chaotic situation. |