Finance Minister AMA Muhith receives a crest during an award-giving ceremony of the HBFC in Dhaka Saturday.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Saturday asked the state-owned House Building Finance Corporation (HBFC) to adopt a long-term policy to expand its financial coverage in rural areas and to improve its service quality.

The minister was addressing an award-giving ceremony organised by the housing finance institution in Dhaka yesterday.

He said the housing industry poses immense potential to grow, as income of different groups of people is increasing day by day.

“Only 18 percent of houses in the country were buildings 27 years back, which has gone up to 30-32 percent now. Thus, the sector has a huge scope to grow further in the days to come,” he said.

He said more investment in the sector could also contribute to the economy.

The minister said he himself felt harassed by the HBFC officials and employees when he borrowed Tk 210,000 from it in the early 80s to construct a building on his wife’s land in Gulshan area.

“I had to come to HBFC physically for over 20 times. Those days were full of bitter experiences. What I like to emphasise is that the management of this organisation should improve quality of its financial services so that people from middle-class bracket can get loan without any hassle,” Muhith said while delivering a speech at the HBFC function.

Speaking on the occasion, Banking Division Secretary Safiqur Rahman Patwary also expressed his anger for the harassments by the HBFC staff to its clients and loan seekers.

“People who need financial support from you (HBFC) often put complaints to me against you. This situation is not expected to continue anymore,” Patwary said.

He also criticised the HBFC management’s decision to waive Tk 0.8 million against loans.

“The HBFC board cannot waive any interest against loans,” he said.

“Stop acting such things again and improve your service quality. Otherwise, you would not obtain trust from the stakeholders,” he said.

He also asked the HBFC management to put on display the citizen charter of the corporation and provide all information regarding financial products on its web site.

HBFC Chairman M Yasin Ali, who chaired programme, said sufferings of HBFC clients are usually caused due to absence of proper correspondence between banks and HBFC regarding loan disbursement and repayments.

“HBFC cannot disburse loan as it has no approval for banking. It depends on Sonali Bank for loan disbursement and to realise installments,” he said.

The HBFC board Chairman proposed to the finance minister to raise the ceiling of maximum loan disbursement to a client from Tk 5 million at present.

He said that a housing loan of Tk 5 million is not sufficient given the current market prices.

HBFC Managing Director Nurul Alam Talukder said the corporation’s annual disbursement target is only between Tk 2.50 billion to Tk 3 billion, which is not adequate to cover wide range of loan-seeking people in the rural areas.

He said the corporation has applied to the Bangladesh bank for a special fund worth Tk 2 billion which now remains pending.

He said more fund is needed to improve both the manpower skill and service quality of HBFC.

“HBFC is a profitable institute of the government and it can do better, if funds are available,” he said.

In the function, the HBFC management accorded crests to five best clients for regular repayment

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 24th June 2012