Khalid Rahim has been elected Independent Director of the Board of Al-Arafah Islami Bank Limited and Chairman of the Board Audit Committee of the bank.

The Board at its 260th meeting held in Dhaka recently unanimously elected Khalid as Independent Director of the bank, said a press release.

Khalid Rahim is a fellow member (FCA) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a member of ICAB (Bangladesh). Currently he is senior consultant of Rahman Rahman Huq, Chartered Accountants, KPMG Bangladesh.

The central Bank has issued a new note of Taka 17,000 crore in the market ahead of the Eid-ul-Fitr.

Out of the amount, Taka 10,000 crore is new and the rest of the currency worth of Taka 7,000 crore is old note, reports BSS.

The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has issued around the note of Taka 4,000 crore in the last two days.

“Huge amount of bank note had been possible to issue in the market as the central bank had full preparation for the demand of the subscribers”, said concerned bank official.

The new note begun to issue in the market from the very beginning of the Ramzan. The demand of the new note at the beginning of Ramzan was around Taka 400-600 crore in per day but it rose to Taka 1500 crore, on in average during the last week, said an official of currency department of the Bangladesh Bank.

Bank of England officials are still concerned by the UK economy’s weakness while business leaders have urged that the “time has come” to raise rates, reports AP.
The nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted to keep rates at 0.5%, as expected.
They agreed that while “employment had continued to increase robustly… wage growth had been surprisingly weak”.
But business leaders believe the Bank may be being too cautious and should start raising interest rates.
James Sproule, chief economist at the Institute of Directors said: “The economic recovery is strong enough that the time has come to be making progress towards [interest rates of 3-4%].”
However, the minutes point out that “there were early signs that global growth was weakening, and an unexpected increase in interest rates when real wages were not yet rising could… destabilise the recovery.
Wage growth excluding bonuses slowed to a record low 0.7% in the three months to May.The minutes added: “The committee agreed that no increase was warranted at this meeting, although for some members the decision had become more balanced in the past few months than earlier in the year”.
Mr Sproule said: “We remain concerned that there is insufficient appreciation that we are experiencing extraordinary monetary policy, and it should not be assumed that such extraordinary policy can continue.
“Looking ahead two years, we would like to be reaching a point where monetary policy could again be effective, which means interest rates in the range of 3-4%.”

'We pledged our financial support (to India) but we also spoke at great length about our knowledge partnership that we are going to build'

RAJSHAHI: Activities of Samabaya Bank in Rajshahi remained suspended for nearly 10 years. As a result, marginal farmers and small entrepreneurs are being trapped by the loan sanctioned at high interest rate by the NGOs.

Sources close to Samabaya Bank said the activities of Samabaya Bank were closed as the bank failed to repay a loan of Tk 55 lakh to the government. As a result, activities of 186 units of Samabaya Samity in various areas of the district remained stalled. At the same time, a substantial amount of money sanctioned to the field levels through various samabayas also remained unrealised for a long time.

Only in Godagari upazila there were 20 units of Samabaya Samity. Only two of these remained somehow active through the own initiatives of the members and others are now almost non-existent. Out of two active units, one is situated at Rishikul Union Bohumukhi Samabaya Samity Limited.

Years ago, farmers and small entrepreneurs used to get small agriculture and other small loans through these Samabaya Samities at a nominal interest rate. There was also no scope to becoming loan defaulter to any member because the loan was being sanctioned through forming co-operative societies.

As the activities of the Samabaya Bank remained closed for nearly 10 years, almost all the co-operative societies formed years ago no longer exist. As a result, farmers and small business entrepreneurs were drawing loan from various NGOs at an exorbitant, multiple interest rate and are turning paupers.