Abu Sazzad :Bangladesh Bank is likely to increase the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) loans among the women entrepreneurs across the country. In this regard, Bangladesh Bank issued a circular recently, for all the chiefs of financial institutions to attend a meeting. The meeting may be held on July 6 or 7, according to the banking sources.During the first quarter (January to March) of the current year, all financial institutions disbursed SME loan of Tk 26,140.08 among 2,10,800 entrepreneurs.Out of the total SME loan disbursement, only Tk 886.73 crore was distributed to the women entrepreneurs.  The role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by women entrepreneurs is vital for overall economic growth of any country. With the help of SMEs, Bangladesh deliberately wants to assist women entrepreneur to empower in the society by providing adequate financial assistance, said Sukumol Sinha Chowdhury, SME Consultant of Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM)."SME development of the women entrepreneurs can reduce the economic disparity from the society, so we have to ensure adequate financial support for the entrepreneurs", said Sukumol Sinha.Bangladesh Bank's Deputy Governor SK Sur Chowdhury said that the central bank is asking and encouraging the scheduled banks to give emphasis on increasing credit supply to the women entrepreneurs.The SME credit would encourage the women entrepreneurs to operate their business smoothly, he said. According to the SME Department of Bangladesh Bank, the SME loan repayment of women entrepreneurs is satisfactory. For this, the central bank wants to ensure more SME loan to the women entrepreneurs, said SME and Special Programmes Department General Manager Swapan Kumar Roy.The aim of the meeting is to provide more SME loan to the women entrepreneurs, said the general manager.

Md Abul Hossain, Director of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, addressing on \'Role of Ramzan in Purifying Wealth and Soul\' organized by Jatrabari branch of the bank on Wednesday.

Md Yeasin Ali, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bangladesh Development Bank, handing over certificates among the trainees of a foundation course at its training institute recently.

AFP, BSS :The World Bank on Wednesday urged China to accelerate reform of its state-dominated financial sector, warning that failure to address the issue could end "three decades of stellar performance" for the world's second-largest economy. The ruling Communist Party has pledged a wide range of economic reforms and the Washington-based institution said reducing the "unique and distorted role of the state" in banking and the wider financial sector was crucial. "Wasteful investment, overindebtedness, and a weakly regulated shadow-banking system," had to be addressed for the broader agenda to succeed, it said. The comments in the China Economic Update were unusually forthright for the World Bank. "Unlike other countries, in China the state still maintains pervasive ownership and control of banks and other financial institutions," it said, including with powerful internal Communist Party committees and authorities appointing and dismissing top executives. "The state has formal ownership of 65 percent of commercial bank assets and de facto control of 95 percent of these assets, making it an outlier by international standards." In some cases, it added, authorities were simultaneously owners, regulators and customers of banks. China's financial system was still "unbalanced, repressed, costly to maintain, and potentially unstable", the bank said, repeating its description from a 2012 report. "Urgency for fundamental reform has further intensified as excess capacity and indebtedness in many economic segments accumulate, amid growing evidence of financial distress," it said. "Failure to address these outcomes could deflect the economic trajectory after three decades of stellar performance." In the document, the World Bank left its economic growth estimate for China this year at 7.1 percent. "Progress in rebalancing the sources of growth in domestic demand will remain incremental," it said. China's leaders are trying to engineer a transformation of the country's growth model whereby consumer demand becomes the main driver rather than investment. "China's financial system was developed to serve the old investment-driven growth model, effective during earlier phases but less so now," the World Bank said. "So, reforms should enable the financial system to reallocate... credit to those sectors that can maintain reasonable growth over the medium-term." China itself has set a target of about 7.0 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for this year, though weak data during the first half of the year has led many private economists to expect that growth this year could come in below that figure. The World Bank also kept its GDP growth forecast for next year in China at 7.0 percent and at 6.9 percent in 2017.