Bangladesh Bank holds meeting today

Dhaka: Bank Asia provided a 3-week Foundation Training to its 30 (thirty) officers in an effort to improve their professional efficiency, reports by the press release. A. Rouf Chowdhury, Chairman of the Bank, handed over certificates to the participants of 32nd Foundation Training Course at the concluding ceremony held at Bank Asia Institute for Training & Development, Rangs Bhaban, Tejgaon, Dhaka on Tuesday. Md. Sazzad Hossain, Executive Vice President & Head of ICCD,   Mamun Mahmud, Senior Vice President & Head of Human Resources Division and   Md. Azharul Islam, Vice President  & Head of Training, were, among others, present.
Bank Asia puts the highest importance on training so as to augment knowledge and skill on the part of personnel.

Syed Ahmed Iqbal Ashraf, president of National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), state owned commercial bank in Pakistan, will be visiting Bangladesh on a four-day official tour starting from Wednesday, says a press release.
During his visit he will have a courtesy call to the governor of Bangladesh Bank and heads of other banks of Bangladesh. Ashraf has experience of over 34 years in domestic and international banking. Before the president of NBP, he was managing director and CEO of PAIR Investment Company Limited.

The government will seek another $1.5 billion from the World Bank and IMF next fiscal year, officials said yesterday.
The government will have to carry out a new round of reforms in various sectors, including macro-economy and financial institution governance, to get the loan.
Of the amount, $500 million may come from the WB as budget support, while the International Monetary Fund will give the rest.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith disclosed the plan to reporters after a meeting with a visiting IMF mission at his secretariat yesterday.
Discussions on another loan proposal will begin after the government gets the last instalment of a $1 billion IMF loan under its extended credit facility (ECF) next year, he said.
Though the minister did not give an exact figure about the new credit programme of the IMF, finance ministry officials said it is likely to be around $1 billion.
The IMF mission proposed to extend the ongoing ECF programme by another year, but Muhith told them that the government wants it to end in time and start a new one.
The IMF mission agreed to offer a new loan, the minister said, adding: “They are interested. In fact, they wanted to start talks on it now.”
However, Muhith said discussions on the new loan may start in May next year as the government now awaits a pay commission report, which will give an estimate of expenditure on salary and benefits of public servants.
The new pay commission will submit the report in December and its implementation is related largely to the national budget.
For the new IMF programme, the government will have to focus on VAT reforms, including the implementation of the new VAT law, and budgetary reforms, Muhith said.
The government has a number of plans for budgetary reforms, he said, adding that the IMF mission has no concern other than VAT reforms for releasing the next instalment of the ECF loan.

 but the minister informed the mission that it cannot be implemented before 2016, and the IMF team has agreed to the plan. The IMF mission, however, asked the government to prepare a "work plan" to implement the VAT law, Muhith said.
The IMF also gave the government a fresh deadline to install software for VAT collection by June next year. The finance minister said they would discuss the issue of $500 million budget support from the WB on the sidelines of the WB-IMF annual meeting in Washington next month.
Muhith expects the agreement to be signed this fiscal year and the amount may be released next fiscal year.
Bangladesh got budget support worth $200 million from the WB last in 2008. During the Awami League government's last tenure, they wanted budget support from the WB, but did not get it, as the global lender had various reservations about governance-related issues.

The inter-bank call money rate, at which banks lend and borrow between each other, rose to 8.25 percent yesterday, as some private banks rushed to borrow to meet their overnight demand.
Total transactions in the market also increased in the past one week. A total of Tk 8,452 crore was transacted in the call money market yesterday, up by Tk 129 crore from the previous day, ahead of Eid-ul-Azha and Durga Puja.
“Credit offtake is gradually rising. Also, the seasonal demand for money is increasing,” said Anis A Khan, managing director of Mutual Trust Bank.
State banks—Agrani, Janata, Rupali and Sonali—were the major lenders with Tk 3,924 crore in the yesterday's call money market. Five foreign banks also lent Tk 668 crore.
Inter-bank call money market remained sluggish in the past several months, and the borrowing costs in this market was around 7 percent.
Bankers attributed this slowdown on their surplus funds. The call money rate generally increases significantly during festivals like Eid, but it was stable, within 10 percent, in the last two years.
“The rate has increased due to demands from tannery and leather businessmen. A huge amount of money will flow out of the banks to meet payments for wages and festival bonuses,” said a senior treasury official of Jamuna Bank.

The highest call money rate was 7 percent on September 15. The rate jumped to 8 percent on the following day and 8.25 percent yesterday. The lowest rate, which was 5.5 percent on September 15, rose to 6.4 percent yesterday.
Some bankers expected that the rate to rise further in the next week, the last few working days before the Eid.
Brac Bank borrowed Tk 801 crore, the highest, from the call money market yesterday, followed by Trust Bank Tk 627 crore, City Bank Tk 602 crore, AB Bank Tk 595 crore and NCC Bank Tk 450 crore, according to data from Bangladesh Bank.
Of the non-bank financial institutions, state-owned Investment Corporation of Bangladesh borrowed the highest, Tk 655 crore, followed by Lanka Bangla Tk 245 crore and IDLC Tk 230 crore.
Rupali and Sonali topped the list of lenders with Tk 1,150 crore and Tk 1,210 crore.
Of the private banks, Dutch-Bangla Bank lent the largest amount -- Tk 707 crore, followed by Mutual Trust Bank with Tk 367 crore.