The central bank issued a letter to foreign exchange departments of banks on Sunday to make records under international card monitoring system

Indian central bank has yet to set any deadline for allowing Islamic banking in the country, according to a news agency.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in response to a query asked under the Right To Information (RTI) act, also said that it had not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in the banks.
Earlier, RBI said that conventional banks might open such window as a part of the gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking or the Islamic banking in India.
An Inter-Departmental Group (IDG) in RBI has already examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing such interest-free banking.
The report has already been submitted to the central government.
It was in late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had suggested looking at the issue of interest-free banking in the country.

Growth rate of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is likely to cross 7 per cent level in the current fiscal year, according to the latest projection of the central bank.

Bangladesh Bank Quarterly (Oct-Dec, 2016) has revealed the projection.

The periodical, officially released on Sunday, also said that the growth projection is based on current and projected trends of a number of variables including global economic growth, domestic and foreign investment, private sector credit growth, electricity production, growth of capital goods import.

In the current fiscal year’s budget, the government has set a target of 7.2 per cent growth while expressed optimism to contain annual rate of inflation within 5.8 per cent.

Bangladesh Bank Quarterly, however, said that though the current level of CPI inflation (12-month average) is below the target, point to point non-food inflation has already been rising since July 2016 which might put some upward pressure on average inflation in coming months.

Last week Asian Development Bank (ADB), in its latest Asian Development Outlook (ADO), projected 6.9 per cent growth for the current fiscal year.

GDP growth reached 7.11 per cent in the last fiscal year (FY16) which was 6.55 per cent in FY15 and 6.06 per cent in FY14.

The board of directors of Southeast Bank has recommended 20 per cent cash dividend for the year ended on December 31, 2016, said an official disclosure on Sunday.

The board has also decided to issue rights shares at the rate of 1R:2 (one rights share for two existing shares) at an issue price of Tk 12.50 including premium of Tk 2.50 per share subject to approval of shareholders in the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) and regulatory authorities – Bangladesh Bank and the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).
The board has also approved to form a fully owned subsidiary company to run the Bank’s Mobile Financial Services brand named “Telecash” subject to approval from the regulatory authorities and shareholders in the EGM.
The bank has also reported consolidated earnings per share (EPS) of Tk 2.66, consolidated net asset value (NAV) per share of Tk 28.93 and consolidated net operating cash flow per share (NOCFPS) of Tk 12.57 for the year ended on December 31, 2016 as against Tk 3.35, Tk 29.67 and Tk 3.85 respectively for the same period of the previous year.
Another record date for entitlement of the proposed rights shares will be notified later after obtaining approval from BSEC.
The EGM and AGM will be held on May 22 at 10:30 am and and 11am respectively at Officers’ Club in Dhaka.
The record date for EGM and AGM is April 27.
There will be no price limit on the trading of the shares of the bank today (Sunday) following its corporate declaration.
Each share of company, which was listed on the Dhaka bourse in 2000, closed at Tk 20.70 on Thursday, the last trading session of the week.
The bank disbursed 15 per cent cash dividend in 2015.
The bank’s paid-up capital is Tk 9.16 billion and authorised capital is Tk 15 billion, while the total number of securities is 916.95 million.
The sponsor-directors own 32.36 per cent stake in the bank, while institutional investors 29.73 per cent, foreigners 6.16 per cent and the general public 31.75 per cent as on February 28, 2017, the DSE data shows.

The four state-owned commercial banks rescheduled 43 percent less loans in 2016 than a year earlier thanks to their cautious approach and a strict stance by the central bank.

Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali banks regularised loans amounting to Tk 2,582 crore last year, in contrast to Tk 4,544 crore in 2015, according to data from the Bangladesh Bank.

Sonali, the largest state-owned bank, rescheduled loans amounting to Tk 475 crore in 2016 -- 72 percent less than in the previous year. Janata rescheduled 34 percent less loans last year and Rupali 32 percent.

Agrani Bank, however, rescheduled more or less the same amount as in the previous year. It rescheduled Tk 540 crore in 2016 in contrast to Tk 512.89 crore a year earlier.

“The rescheduling declined as the banks classified fewer loans,” said Rupali Managing Director Ataur Rahman Prodhan.

Most of the bad loans were rescheduled in the last two years and banks are now putting in more effort to recover cash against those loans.

“Moreover, banks are more serious about nursing clients so they don't default. As a result, loan rescheduling has come down,” Prodhan added.

In recent months, the BB has also become strict in allowing loan rescheduling without the requisite down payment, said a senior executive of the central bank.  Before Fazle Kabir took charge as the central bank governor last year, banks were allowing loan rescheduling without taking the required down payment, he said.

But the new governor asked the respective department of the central bank to approve loan rescheduling proposals only after confirming the deposit of down payment, thus bringing down loan rescheduling significantly, the senior executive said.

Sonali, Rupali and Janata performed well in cash recovery from defaulters last year, according to a BB report.

Sonali realised 30.51 percent of its cash recovery target of Tk 4,400 crore from the top 20 defaulters in 2016. The rate was 10.55 percent in 2015. The cash recovery for Janata was 52.64 percent against 35.61 percent in 2015. Rupali achieved 69 percent of the target, whereas the rate was 9.33 percent a year ago. 

Agrani performed poorly, realising only 2.23 percent of the target of Tk 2,900 crore in 2016. The lender had managed to recover 22.36 percent of its cash recovery target in 2015, according to the central bank.

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