Agrani Bank, which has antique gold coins worth over Tk. 100 crore in unclaimed lockers, is not keen on handing over the assets to the central bank, sources said.
In a recent letter, Bangladesh Bank (BB) has asked all state-owned commercial banks, including Agrani Bank, to hand over gold coins and other valuable assets lying in unclaimed lockers for more than 10 years to the central bank as those are considered the property of the state as per the Bank Company Act, 1991. The BB has asked state-owned commercial banks to hand over those valuable assets by July 31. But Agrani Bank said it has not received huge amount of rents during the period from its clients for preserving the lockers. “Agrani Bank has due rights to get the outstanding rents for protection of property. If the property is being handed over to BB, the bank would not be able to recover unpaid rents,” said an official of the Agrani Bank, seeking anonymity.
He said the sum of unpaid rent for those unclaimed lockers already crossed Tk. 2 crore.
He said, during the latest assessment in 2009 by professional gold traders, the bank management found value of gold coins and other valuables of the unclaimed lockers worth Tk. 10 crore. “But, the antique value of these gold coins is not less than Tk. 100 crore, according to gold traders,” he said.
According to him, the management of Agrani Bank has discussed the issue and analysed legal jurisdiction regarding the valuables. Now, they want to discuss this issue again in the next board meeting as the bank’s managing director preferred it.
Meanwhile, the central bank officials said Agrani Bank is spending time to increase the the amount of rent for preservation of the lockers to grab the property.
“Not only Agrani Bank, other state-owned banks also didn't pay heed to previous letters regarding handing over of unclaimed lockers’ valuables,” he said.
He added that many gold coins and jewellery found in unclaimed lockers at the Agrani Bank are more than 100 years old.

News: The Independent/ Bangladesh/ 25-Jul-2011

The central bank has issued directives to the non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) to raise their paid-up capital to Tk 100 crore  with immediate effect.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) has served a circular to all the NBFIs in this regard on Sunday. According to the previous BB circular, the paid-up capital for NBFIs was Tk 50 crore. "This decision has been taken to increase the risk management capabilities of the NBFIs," said a high official of the central bank's Department of Financial Institutions and Market, wishing not to be named. He said the central bank has taken a number of measures to institutionalise good governance in the NBFIs in order to build better management capacity with skilled and professional personnel, and ensure transparency, accountability and dynamism. Besides, in order to strengthen the financial base of such institutions, the central bank is working on  implemention of Basel-II.
"Hence, the BB has decided that the minimum equity base (paid-up capital + reserve) of any NBFI licensed under the Financial Institutions Act 1993 should be doubled from Tk 50 crore to Tk 100 crore," he said.
In the latest circular, the central bank has advised the NBFIs to collect paid-up capital by taking initiatives for issuance of IPO (Initial Public Offering) or right share or bonus share, in case of shortage of funds. 
According to the circular, the NBFIs were given a timeframe up to June 30, 2012 for full compliance to the central bank directives.
In the circular, the central bank has imposed an embargo on disbursement of profit in cash without fulfilling the paid-up capital requirements.
Under the central bank directives, the paid-up capital for the NBFIs was last raised from Tk 25 crore to Tk 50 crore in November, 2009.

News: the Independent/ Bangladesh/ 25-Jul-2011

Bangladesh Bank (BB) will start providing online information of its Credit Information Bureau (CIB) reports to banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) from July 19, which will make faster the lending services and will eventually cut the cost of doing business. BB Governor Dr Atiur Rahman will inaugurate the online service at the central bank’s headquarters in the capital city, bringing an end to the manual, time consuming and cumbersome process of sharing the important credit information among banks and financial institutions.
All the 47 banks and 29 NBFIs of the country will be able to collect the online CIB reports on July 19 and onwards. The banks and financial institutions would also be able to collect the CIB reports from the central bank physically if they want, the central bank officials said.
“This is a part of the continuous process of digitizing the central bank and the country’s banking sector to ensure efficient, faster and transparent services to the people,” Dr Rahman told BSS today. He said the online service will make the CIB reports only a click away, which now takes five to seven days.
The report, however, used to take at least three months before Dr Rahman was made the governor. The governor said the faster CIB reports would cut the cost of doing business when the banks, NBFIs and respective persons would get it without going to the persisting hassles and longer time-frame. “The Election Commission (EC) and other government organizations and agencies can also get necessary information to determine whether any particular person is a loan defaulter or not,” he said, observing that this convenient and accurate information would help combat credit related corruption.
Besides, Dr Rahman said the central bank would ensure better use of its manpower after introducing the online CIB reports as only five to seven staff can handle the entire system whereas few hundred people are now doing the jobs. The governor said the huge manpower, which is now busy in handling over 5,000 CIB reports every month, would be use their skill in other necessary services of the central bank.

News: The Independent/ Bangladesh/ July-12-2011

Bangladesh Bank has fixed the interest rebate on spices at 4 percent, which will come into effect on July 1.

Currently, state banks provide loans in the spices sector at the rate of 2 percent interest. The target of loan disbursement in the current fiscal year was Tk 96 crore, of which 71 percent has already been disbursed in the first 10 months.

Source: The Daily Star/Bangladesh/Jun, 02, 2011

The central bank yesterday said people who now blame Bangladesh Bank (BB) for its inaction in dealing with the banks' overexposure to the capital markets had once put pressure on the BB to go soft on the banks' links with the stockmarket.

“It is curious that those now blaming the BB for inaction were themselves actively lobbying to pressurise the BB to prolong compliance timelines for banks,” the central bank said in a statement yesterday after a meeting with business leaders.

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) on Sunday blamed the BB for not taking actions against the errant banks that had invested heavily in the stockmarket to make quick profits.

FBCCI President AK Azad said they raised the issues of liquidity crisis and interest rate. "The central bank told us that the situation is improving and the problems will be over soon,” he added.

BB Executive Director Jahangir Alam said, “We have told the businessmen that the banks do not have any liquidity crisis.”

The central bank in a written statement said the assertion in FBCCI's press bulletin that the BB did nothing to restrain banks from capital market investments beyond statutory ceiling is incorrect.

The BB asked banks to set aside their 2010 capital market investment gains for adjustment of subsequent losses, it said.

Banks are free to make their business decisions about investment of the post-adjustment remainders in the capital market, and there can be no question of coercing them to do so by a BB directive.

On the FBBCI's demand for imposing cap on the rate of interest on loans, the BB said, with inflation high and rising, the banks cannot attract deposits at low interest rates from individuals, households and businesses; and rising deposit interest rates necessarily push up lending interest rates.

Imposing ceilings on deposit and lending interest rates will worsen matters, hurting growth in deposits and the volume of available credit.

The BB also said, only by bringing down credit expansion to levels commensurate with nominal growth of the economy, inflation level can be brought down, in turn bringing down the deposit and lending interest rates.

The lending rate caps still remaining on credit for some essential and productive purposes are proving counterproductive, reducing credit access for these purposes, creating a sense of liquidity crunch, the central bank said.

Fighting down the rising trend of inflation is now a key concern in all economies -- developed and developing, the BB said.

It said, the lending and deposit interest rate ceilings in China mentioned ,in FBCCI's press bulletin are remnants of their communist era practices; and China has acted far more aggressively in fighting down their inflation rate, which is only half that of Bangladesh.

Since January 2011, China has raised interest rates four times, while Bank of England has done so twice. India has raised Indian policy interest rates nine times from January 2010, against thrice by the BB.

Bigger businesses in Bangladesh can contribute significantly in easing the rise in domestic lending interest rates by leaning less on local banks for term financing of their investment projects.

This will also ease depreciation pressure on exchange rate of the taka, and help avoid buildup of asset liability maturity mismatch in books of local banks, the BB said.

It said the rise in deposit interest rates is already showing pickup in deposit growth, improving market liquidity and the volume of loanable funds.

"We believe the business community is fully aware of the necessary tradeoffs in short term adjustment pains for stable, sound growth over the medium and longer term," the BB said in the statement.

In the current local and global inflationary environment, it is impracticable to continue with lending rate caps imposed during the global downturn.

The central bank is closely monitoring interest rate practices of individual banks to weed out practices or tendencies unfair or undesirable from consumer protection viewpoint, the BB said.

The BB will look into specific grievances of individual businesses in this respect for prompt redress, it said.

Source: The Daily Star/Bangladesh/May 31, 2011