Azam J Chowdhury has been elected chairman of Prime Bank for two years from June 1, the bank said in a statement yesterday.
Chowdhury, an industrialist and entrepreneur, is the chairman of East Coast Group and Consolidated Tea and Lands Company Bangladesh (formerly, James Finlay).
He is also the managing director of MJL Bangladesh, distributor of Exxon Mobil Corporation, and serves as director of Central Depo-sitory Bangladesh.
Chowdhury has also been serving as the vice president of Bangladesh Energy Companies Asso-ciation and was recently elected as president of Bangladesh Ocean Going Ship Owner's Association.

 Pubali Bank Limited organised a five-day-long training programme titled “Refreshers Course” for the deputy managers of the bank at the bank’s training institute recently.

M.A. Halim Chowdhury, Additional Managing Director of the bank attended the programme as chief guest, said a press release.

He distributed certificates among the participants.

Niranjan Chandra Gope, Head of Training of Pubali Bank Training Institute presided over the ceremony.

SAM Salimullah, Senior Executive Vice President of Union Bank Limited, inaugurates a new branch of the bank at Badarkhali, Cakaria in Cox’s Bazar on Monday. 

Union Bank Limited opened a branch at Badarkhali, Cakaria, in Cox’s Bazar on Monday.

SAM Salimullah, Senior Executive Vice President of Union Bank Limited, inaugurated the branch, said a press release.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has assured Bangladesh government of financing at least one mega coal-fired power project at Moheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar, a senior official said.

“The ADB country programme mission primarily agreed to finance a coal-fired power project at Moheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar,” the official told daily sun on Tuesday.

He said the Power Division got ADB’s primary nod after getting assurance from the government that the proposed coal-fired power project would be super critical one.

But the Asian donour agency is yet to finilise the amount of the fund, he said, adding, the size of the funding would be determined following the feasibility study of the power project. The government has already selected 5,000 acres of land to implement a number of power projects to generate 8320MW electricity at Moheshkhali and another 1,500 acres of land at Matarbari. It would be the second loan assurance from the donor agencies to implement the government initiative for setting up coal-fired power plants for 20,000MW electricity by 2030, sources said. The Japanese agency JICA is expected to sign $1.18 billion loan deal with Bangladesh next month to set up a 1200MW coal-fired power project at Matarbari.

In March, 2014, State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid visited the proposed coal plant sites at Moheshkhali and Matarbari and said the government would develop the sites as major coal power hubs. He said the government would compensate the local people properly while acquiring lands to implement the clean coal-fired power projects. Of the 5000 acres land at Moheshkhali, the government has a target to implement a series of coal-fired projects having capacity to generate 5,320MW of electricity. Besides, the rest 3000MW of electricity will come from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) fired plant, officials concerned said.

Bangladesh Power Development Board and China Hudian Hong Kong power company on April 29, 2014 signed a deal to set up a 1320MW coal-based power plant at Moheshkhali.

Besides, signing another memorandum of understanding with the Malaysian state-owned Tenega Nasional Berhad (TNB) is under process to set up a 1320MW plant there.

Korea’s largest power producer company Korea Electric Power Corporation has shown interest to set up a mega 1320MW coal-fired power plant at the same site.

The government has already allowed eight projects in private sector to Orion Group, S Alam Group and BSRM Group but project implementation is not satisfactory.

Of 19 coal-fired projects, only 1320MW Bangladesh-India Friendship power at Rampal has so far developed the land, officials said.

The default loans of BASIC Bank growing abnormally fast in the recent months as loans the bank had disbursed through irregularities are getting matured.

In March only, it rose by Tk1,140 crore or more than 80% to stand at Tk2,557 crore from Tk1,417 crore in February as the newly classified loan increased by Tk1,539 crore in March.

Maximum of the loan the bank disbursed violating the rules and without proper documents in the year 2009 to 20012. This resulted in the abnormal growth of the default loans every month, said a senior executive of Bangladesh Bank.

The increasing trend of the classified loan is the continuous effect of earlier loan forgery which has eroded the financial health of the bank gradually, he said.

The amount of new classified loan was Tk217.5 crore in December last and it rose to Tk343.6 crore in January, Tk403.6 crore in February and Tk1,539 crore in March, according to the latest statement (unaudited) BASIC Bank submitted to Bangladesh Bank.

The total classified loan of the bank increased by 99% to Tk2,557 crore in March from Tk1282 crore in December 2013.

The outstanding loan with the top 20 defaulters stood at Tk915 crore in March from Tk880 crore in December, against almost zero recovery from the defaulters.

Bangladesh Bank signed a MoU with the bank to recover its financial health in September last year but the bank could not come out from the sorry state due to drastic increase of classified loans, said a senior executive of Bangladesh Bank.

Moreover, all the financial indicators of the bank became negative day by day due to further irregularities in loan disbursement after signing the MoU.

As a result, the deposit growth fell sharply as the depositors lost confidence on the bank, he said.

The deposit growth of the bank was 58% in July 2013, but came down to 1.65% in December last year. The growth turned negative by 2.49% in January, 0.43% in February and 0.61% in March.

The bank also took the highest advantage of relaxed loan rescheduling rules to reduce the burden of classified loan in December last.

The bank rescheduled classified loan of Tk1,151 crore in December. As a result, the total classified loan of the bank reduced to 11.82% in December from 18.43% in September last year. But the amount of classified loan further rose to 23% in March due to the increasing newly classified loans, according to the Bangladesh Bank data.

News:Dhaka Tribune/27-May-2014