Finance Minister AMA Muhith, Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman and Deputy Governor SK Sur Chowdhury, are seen at a function on digitisation of the central bank in Dhaka Saturday.

In line with the government’s target for digitising Bangladesh towards poverty alleviation, Bangladesh Bank (BB) is implementing many innovative initiatives to build a countrywide modern technology-based, efficient and more secure banking system.

The initiatives of the central bank already brought various banking services in 19 major areas under automation. These include introduction of Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH), Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network (BEFTN), online CIB service, banking application, enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-tendering, e-recruiting, e-commerce, online dashboard reporting system, national payment system, large loan monitoring software, import export and remittance monitoring system, open data initiative, online transactions of prize bond and savings certificate, online bond market, mobile banking, internet and online banking and PayPal for remitting income from outsourcing.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally inaugurated the digitization initiatives at a programme in the city Saturday.

BB on October 10, 2010 launched the automated clearing and settlement of interbank cheques and electronic transactions to address the growing demand for a fast, secure and state-of-the art payment system in the country’s banking sector. The automated clearing system helps individuals and businesses to settle their transactions faster, which eventually quicken the financial activities and thus business and return as well.

Introduced on February 28, 2011, BEFTN is also a critical component in the development of a modern payment system infrastructure, which facilitates a wide variety of credit transfer applications such as payroll, foreign and domestic remittance, company dividends, bill payments, corporate salary payments, tax payments and payments for many government fees and allowances and person to person debit transfer.

Currently, 37 out of total 47 banks are offering online and internet banking services to their customers.

Introduction of online CIB (credit information bureau) report on July 19, 2011 offers banks, financial institutions and entrepreneurs furnish necessary credit information at anytime around the year.

Mobile banking takes to the banking services to grassroots level where many people had long been deprived of the institutional financial services. Following the issuance of the guideline for mobile financial services by BB on September 22, 2012, many banks started providing this service 24 hours a day and seven days a week with partnership of mobile phone operators.

Many firms have started selling various products and services online after the central bank introduced e-commerce.

Introduction of e-tendering and e-recruiting has made more transparent of the tendering and recruiting process of the central bank. 

An official of Prime bank Limited, voluntarily donates blood for better treatment of the victims of Savar “Rana Plaza” tragedy at the bank’s office opremises in Dhaka recently. Md. Shirajul Islam Mollah, Chairman of PBL inaugurated the blood donation campaign.

Prime Bank Limited expressed deep sympathy to the victims and their families of Savar “Rana Plaza” tragedy took place on 24 April.

The management of Prime Bank Limited has decided to help the victims and their families by contributing one day’s basic salary of all the employees of the bank as donation, said a press release.

The bank organized a voluntary blood donation campaign on 27th April at the office premises of the bank to collect blood for better treatment of the victims of Savar “Rana Plaza” tragedy.

Chairman of the Prime Bank Md. Shirajul Islam Mollah inaugurated the campaign. Employees of the Prime Bank participated in the voluntary blood donation campaign.

Managing Director& CEO of Prime Bank Md. Ehsan Khasru, Deputy Managing Directors, Ahmed Kamal Khan Chowdhury, Kanti Kumar Saha and Quazi ASM Anisul Kabir and Chief Executive Officer of Prime Bank Foundation Dr. Iqbal Anwar were also present.

Rokshana Zaman has been elected vice-chairperson of Dhaka Bank Limited.

Zaman, the proprietor of Manehor Fisheries and Dhaka Enterprise, started her career as a pioneer entrepreneur in garments sector, said a press release.

She first involved herself in the banking business as an alternate Director of Dhaka Bank in 1996.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman speaks at a seminar at a hotel in Dhaka Sunday. sun Photo

The Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman has called upon all the banks and financial institutions not to finance any errant garment factories.

“We urge the banks and financial institutions not to provide any financial facility to non-compliant garment factories,” Dr Atiur Rahman said, while emerging from a seminar held in the city Sunday.

The call from the BB boss came, following the collapse of a Savar building that housed five RMG units on Wednesday, leaving nearly four hundreds dead.

From now on, he said, such financing would require compliance letter as the central bank has been working to make sure that RMG units are developed in a compliant way.

“We’ve to make sure that greedy factory owners don’t get any facility from the country’s financial sector and its executives have to ensure us that they won’t encourage such people,” Atiur said.

Terming the Savar mayhem a “collective failure,” he said the government, development partners, private organisations and trade bodies have to work together to fend off such incidents further. However, he sees the accident as an “opportunity” for the nation, hoping that it could be an eye opener for all.

When his attention was drawn to the fact that many RMG factory owners happen to be bank owners also, the Governor said in such cases, chief executives of those banks would be held responsible for the violation of any directives of the regulator.

The governor also applauded the courageous rescue operation conducted by the combined forces and the civilians, saying that the spontaneous response from the people to the accident was unprecedented and unique in the world.

Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited has extended its support to the Rana Plaza tragedy victims by donating Tk 1.0 lakh to each of the deceased who died at the collapse of the 9-storey building at Savar on Wednesday last.

DBBL also mourned the tragic death of the poor garments workers and also expressed deep sympathy towards their family members who have been injured by the disaster.