Kanak Kumar Purkayastha, Deputy Managing Director of BASIC Bank Limited, seen with the participants of the 16th foundation training course at the bank’s training cell in Dhaka Saturday.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/18-Nov-12

BRAC Bank launched debit card for farmers in Dinajpur enabling them to buy agricultural materials, avail loan and withdraw cash whenever necessary in easier way.

The bank in association with Bestec Investment, partner of the bank for the project, organised a programme in Birganj Degree College at Birganj in Dinajpur Friday to hand over Krishak Card to 200 local farmers.

Ahmed Shamim Al Raji, Deputy Commissioner, Dinajpur, Md. Rafiqul Islam, President, Dinajpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mohammad Mamdudur Rashid, Deputy Managing Director, BRAC Bank, Architect Md. Tariqul Islam, Chairman, Bestec Investment Ltd, attended the programme.

Babu Chitta Ghosh, President, Dinajpur Press Club, Md. Quamruzzaman, Managing Director, Bestec Agro Ltd, officials from local administration offices, local dignitaries and senior officials of BRAC Bank, were also present.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/18-Nov-12

Financial weekly Industry awarded 12 commercial banks, eight of which have strong ratings while four were recognised for their high contribution to remittance channelling.

The weekly also awarded three best remittance recipient bankers at a function in the city on Saturday.

Eight highly-rated banks include Prime Bank Ltd, Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd, Pubali Bank Ltd, Arab-Bangladesh

Bank Ltd, Al-Arafah Islami Bank Ltd, Dutch-Bangla Bank Ltd, National Bank Ltd and State Bank of India.

The best four remittance channelling banks are Sonali Bank Ltd, Janata Bank Ltd, Agrani Bank Ltd and Southeast Bank Ltd.

Besides, the awarded bankers were named as Md Abdul Mannan, managing director of Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd, Helal Ahmed Chowdhury, managing director of Pubali Bank Ltd and Shamsul Huda Khan, deputy managing director of National Bank Ltd.

Former Finance Adviser to a caretaker government Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam attended the function as chief guest.

With Industry editor Enayet Karim in the chair, the function was also attended by Bangladesh Bank’s former deputy governor Ataul Haque, Association of Bankers Bangladesh president Nurul Amin and Global Economists Forum president Shah Md. Nurul Alam.

“Banks must shun their profiteering tendency if they want to take their services to the doorsteps of the people,” said Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam.

He observed that there is a huge gap between deposit and lending interest rates.

“If not run in appropriate manner, the country’s banking sector would face a setback,” warned the veteran economist.

He added the banking sector’s failure did lead the US and the EU economies to plunge into recessions in recent time.

The banks would need to strengthen internal vigilance, reporting requirement, internal audit and maintaining proper risk management to ensure their smooth running, Dr Mirza Aziz suggested.

ABB president emphasised the growth of private sector to uplift the economy. “The country’s private sector holds 70 percent of total asset and liability in the banking sector, which amounts to Tk 350 billion.”

“Challenges are ahead for the banking sector as it will have to implement the BASEL-III,” Nurul Amin added.

Islami Bank MD Md. Abdul Mannan informed that the bank has 6.7 million depositors and provided financing to over 700,000 entrepreneurs across the country.

He said Islami Bank has also distributed micro credit to 650,000 families in 17,000 villages across the country. Besides, the bank’s SME financing now amounts to Tk 170 billion.

Industry editor Enayet Karim alleged that the banks usually do profit engineering rather than removing their basic weaknesses that ultimately impede the banking sector’s expected success.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/18-Nov-12

Children make faces at shoppers in Corporation Street in Corby, central England on Friday.

LONDON: Economists in Britain have labelled the Bank of England’s (BOE) quarterly economic forecast as a “fairly dismal prospect” and predicted that Britain may never again return to its long-term annual GDP trend growth of 2.5 percent.

The effects of the continuing eurozone crisis have been highlighted by the governor of the BOE Sir Mervyn King as the main threat to the British economy, which saw a double-dip recession as it struggles to overcome the financial crisis that began in 2008.

Britain’s largest trading partner is the European Union, and continued uncertainty and worries over sovereign debt among eurozone countries affects Britain, even though it does not use the euro.

“The BOE quarterly figures are a fairly dismal prospect, and reflects a sad failure of policy both in Britain and also to some extent in the eurozone,” Jonathan Portes, the director of economic think-tank National Institute for Economic and Social Research, told Xinhua.

Portes, a former chief economist in the cabinet office of the British government, said he believed governments in the eurozone and in Britain had failed in their legislation plans for banks and in economic policy.

This has combined with a failure to address the structural problems in the British and the European banking systems, said Portes, and had contributed to poor economic prospects in the short and medium term.

GDP growth will be positive next year, but will remain below trend, Portes forecast.

King’s gloomy BOE forecast took into account that the boost to the economy given by the London Olympic Games is now fading and households are facing yet another year where incomes are likely to be squeezed by wages which fail to keep pace with inflation.

King said when he unveiled quarterly economic figures earlier this week that “growth is likely to remain sluggish, and inflation above target” and that the “road to recovery will be long and winding.” Earlier this week, the Office for National Statistics showed inflation was a continuing problem for Britain. Average pay, stripped of bonuses, grew by 1.9 percent year-on-year - - well behind inflation at 2.7 percent.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/18-Nov-12

Bangladesh Bank will host the 12th Saarc Payment Council (SPC) meeting with the central bank officials of eight Saarc countries at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka today.

BB Governor Atiur Rahman will inaugurate the meeting, according to a statement of Bangladesh Bank.

BB previously also hosted the seventh meeting of the council on March 28, 2010, and the meeting is usually held twice in a year and rotates among the member countries on consensus basis.

Bangladesh Bank is hosting the council meeting with a wider vision of cooperation among the member countries especially in the area of legal and regulatory reforms, oversight policy and framework and in-frastructural development of payment systems.

Saarc Payments Initiative (SPI) is a regional payment group formed by the member central banks/ monetary authorities of the SAARCFINANCE Group to help each other to reform national payment and settlement systems (PSS) individually and regional PSS collectively.

The initiative of establi-shing the SPI was originated at the SAARCFINANCE Conference on �Towards a Regional Payment

Group� held in Colombo in July 2007.

News: The Daily Star/Bangladesh/18-Nov-12