Banks and financial institutions (FIs) in the country have been asked by the central bank to strengthen efforts dedicated to build online database for providing banking services to people efficiently by avoiding risks.  According to a Bangladesh Bank (BB) circular, banks and FIs will not be allowed to provide data to the central bank manually from 1st of July.

However, banks and FIs would get time till 30th of June for upgrading online database.
Up to June 2012, the central bank would allow weekly or monthly statements of the banks and FIs through both online and manual.

In a separate circular, the central bank has made the online database mandatory for quick delivery on demand.
“This effort is aimed at making database services faster for efficient and appropriate evaluation for initiating right decision timely by the regulator,” said an official of the department concerned.  

Wished not to be named, the official said, “As regulator, the central bank is to ensure execution of prudent banking policy in order to help banks and FIs avoid risks.” 

The official said the central bank found that many banks are less efficient in credit proposal assessment that is causing classified loans to go up.

It was also found that they didn’t send credit record to the central bank regularly within the timeframe that resulted in non-intervention by the regulator, said the official. Thus, execution of the prudent guideline of the regulator is important and it is not possible without online database, the official added.

The Daily Independent/Bangladesh/ 29th Jan 2012