An emergency meeting of the National Committee on Fake Note Prevention will be held today (Wednesday) at the Bangladesh Bank head office.

The meeting will analyze the information on circulation and use of fake notes as well as determining the steps to prevent the crime.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr. Atiur Rahman will preside over the meeting where others members of the committee including representatives from finance ministry, home ministry, law ministry, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Crime Investigation Department (CID) of Police, National Security Intelligence (NSI), Bangladesh Police, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) and Court will be present.

BB sources said the latest situation on spreading of fake currency across the country, activities of the gangs behind fake notes, ways to detect criminals, and roles of banks in this regard would be discussed at the meeting.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 15th Feb 2012

Bangladesh Bank Gove rnor Dr. Atiur Rahman has urged the banks and financial institutions as well as the affluent segment of the society to come forward to help the poor and meritorious students.

He said the key to sustainable development of a country like Bangladesh lies with only developing the human resources and the very first step of which is education.

Keeping this in view to face the challenges of the 21st century the present government has given utmost priority in building knowledge-based and digital Bangladesh as well as developing human resources in the overall development programme, Governor added.

The Governor said this while addressing a function on distribution of education scholarship organised by the Southeast Bank Foundation at the Institute of Diploma Engineers (IDEB) on Saturday.

Dr. Atiur also stressed on nurturing the talent of youths mentioning that they will be the driving force of booting economic growth in the future.

Praising the Southeast Bank Foundation’s initiatives Governor said such step will play significant role in ensuring entrance in all stages of education and also in building a knowledge-base and organised society.

Southeast Bank Foundation has taken an initiative to implement a long term education scholarship programme since 2009 under which it has provided stipends to 582 students in 2010-11 and so far it has provided stipends to a total of 1263 students till 2011.

Governor has advised the students to study well aiming to turn into skilled human resources as well as asset for the country.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 12th Feb 2012

The newly-appointed 64 assistant directors of Bangladesh Bank start countrywide field-level inspection today (Sunday) with a view to bringing transparency, accountability and pace in banks’ agriculture and SME credit disbursement programme as well as achieve loan disbursement target.

The assistant directors in 28 groups will inspect farm and SME credit disbursement programme in 56 upazilas of 28 districts across the country.

The BB officials, who are now receiving training, will collect data and find out problems and explore possibilities during the field-level visit that will continue till February 23, said the BB spokesperson on Saturday.

The BB teams will talk to the farmers, and small and medium entrepreneurs, listen to their problems, explore possibilities and visit rural bank branches during the tour, he said.

The districts include Jamalpur, Narsingdi, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Sherpur and Moulvibazar apart from the districts that have rural economic bases.

The central bank thinks such initiative would help ensure successful implementation of agriculture and SME loan programme and create awareness among the small and medium entrepreneurs.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 12th Feb 2012

The central bank yesterday came down heavily on foreign banks having operations in Bangladesh for a high interest rate spread, which is depriving both depositors and borrowers.

Bangladesh Bank (BB) asked all commercial banks, including foreign banks, to keep the interest rate spread at 5 percent. The average interest rate spread for foreign banks is around 9 percent, which is below 6 percent for the local commercial banks.

The suggestion came at a meeting on implementation of the monetary policy, which was announced last month, at the central bank office in Dhaka with its Governor Atiur Rahman in the chair.

A participant in the meeting quoted Rahman as saying the BB will closely monitor the interest rate spread to keep it below 5 percent, except for small and medium enterprises and consumer loans.

Hassan Zaman, senior economic adviser to the governor, presented a keynote paper on the latest monetary policy and current economic situation.

Zaman said the BB will also ensure adequate liquidity for productive investment, according to the participant in the meeting who requested not to be named.

The spread refers to the difference between the interest rates for lending and deposit.
BB statistics showed the weighted average deposit rate of the foreign banks was 4.51 percent in November 2011, while the weighted average credit rate was 13.34 percent at the same time.

In case of private banks, the weighted average deposit rate was 8.53 percent in November 2011, while the weighted average lending rate was 13.87 percent, BB data showed.

On one hand, the foreign banks are paying less interest to the depositors and on the other, they are making huge profits from a high interest on loans, the BB official said.

The foreign banks have made substantial profits over the years, although they have a limited scale of operations in Dhaka and Chittagong alone.

In 2009, the foreign banks made a net profit of Tk 930 crore, which was Tk 915 crore in 2010, according to BB data.

After the meeting, Sitangshu Kumar Sur Chowdhury, deputy governor of the BB, told journalists, “We asked the commercial banks to discourage loan disbursement to non-productive sectors and encourage loans for the productive sectors.”

He also said one of the major objectives of the recently launched monetary policy is to bring down the inflation rate to a single digit.

He said the BB also called upon bankers not to discourage imports of basic commodities.
Mohammed Nurul Amin, chairman of the Association of Bankers Bangladesh (ABB), said he supports the central bank's move to discourage loan disbursement to non-productive sectors.

The latest monetary policy targets to cut credit growth to the private sector to 16 percent by June. It was around 20 percent in December.

Both the BB deputy governor and ABB chairman said bringing down credit growth for the private sector to 16 percent is enough to achieve the current fiscal year's economic growth target.

A few days ago, the ABB leaders set a self-imposed cap on deposit and credit rates at 12.5 and 15.5 percent, to discourage unhealthy competition in the banking system.

At yesterday's meeting, all bankers committed to following the self-imposed cap on deposit and lending rates, said Chowdhury, adding that the central bank did not intervene in this process.

In addition, the primary dealer banks are currently facing a liquidity crisis as they cannot cash the excess investment in bonds at around Tk 16,000 crore.

The Daily Star/Bangladesh/ 10th Feb 2012

Bangladesh Bank (BB) yesterday said the major economic indicators of the country have started improving while the government’s borrowing from the banking sector also marked a fall in recent times.

Top officials of the central bank came up with the observations during a meeting with the chief executives of the scheduled banks at the BB conference room.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman presided over the meeting.
Emerging from the meeting, BB Deputy Governor SK Sur Chowdhury said the government's borrowing from the banking channel exceeded Tk 210 billion a few days ago, which now stands at Tk 160 billion.

Food inflation has also come down while an increased remittance inflow has been pushing the economic indicators upward, Shur Chowdhury said.

He also said the meeting discussed the ways to effectively implement the new monetary policy.
The meeting gave some directives to the banks to work on implementing the monetary policy as well as aiming to lowering down the inflation rate to a single digit, the BB deputy governor added.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 10th Feb 2012