Bangladesh Bank has so far disbursed Tk 14,000 crore under refinance schemes, including the Export Development Fund.

As of June 6, Tk 443 crore has been disbursed by the state-owned commercial banks and Tk 8,291 crore by the private banks.

The foreign banks gave out Tk 1,207 crore and the specialised banks Tk 4,058 crore, according to data from the central bank.

Another statistics of the central bank showed that except the EDF fund the banks have disbursed Tk 4,822 crore until June 30 through various refinance schemes to 47,988 enterprises.

Besides, EDF has been raised to $2 billion in May from its initial $100 million in 2006. A BB official said its size has been raised significantly as its demand rose in the last three years.

The demand increased as its rate of interest is low. At present, the rate of interest is Libor plus 2 percent.

The BB official said the borrowers can take loans from other refinance schemes with single digit interest rates, whereas the average interest rate for loans from the banking sector is 12 percent.

Women customers usually do not get loans from banks, but with the refinance scheme the BB is reaching out to them.

As of June 30, a total of 12,251 women entrepreneurs have been given Tk 1,109 crore loans through the refinance schemes.

The central bank's promotion of socially responsible-inclusive financing is upholding adequacy of credit flows to farm, non-farm productive, micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs), Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman told The Daily Star. Those segments are typically underserved or overlooked by traditional banking.

MSMEs supported this way are generating incremental output on the supply side, alongside employment and income on the demand side, augmenting the GDP growth and speeding up poverty decline.

In 2014, 24.3 percent of the country's population were below the upper poverty line, down from 31.5 percent in 2010, according to the finance ministry estimates.

Thanks to the central bank initiative, 1.65 crore new no-frills bank accounts have been opened since 2009 in the names of unbanked low-income population segments.

A Tk 200 crore refinance scheme has been formed for giving loans to this segment of population through the no-frills bank accounts. But the banks are yet to give a single taka loan through this programme, the BB official said.

In the upcoming monetary policy for the current fiscal year, due to be announced on July 30, various steps will be taken to force the banks to give loans from the refinance schemes.

The central bank is set to take out another $200 million refinance scheme this year, from which loans will be given to green transitional export-oriented enterprises.

About Tk 4,000 crore has been disbursed through Bangladesh Krishi Bank (BKB) and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (Rakub), and the central bank conducted a study on this.

The objective of the study was to find the impact of the refinance schemes by comparing the economic well-being of those who have taken loans from BKB and Rakub with those who have not.

The economic conditions, in terms of assets, income and surplus income, have proved that the group farmers that have taken loans from the two state organisations are in a better position than the others.

About 98 percent of the target group farmers agreed that they have been benefited from agricultural credit of BKB and Rakub.