Dhaka, Dec 18: The World Bank (WB) will provide Tk 1027.50 crore, (equivalent to $ 150 million) to Bangladesh, aimed at creating jobs for 100 days in the rural areas for the extreme poor during two lean seasons a year. The programme covers one lean season from October to December and another from March to May when rural day labourers are often out of work.

The households, where the head is a manual labourer and which have less than half an acre of land will be eligible for the programme. It is estimated that over 600,000 men and women will benefit from the programme during each lean season.

The disaster management and relief division of food and disaster management ministry will implement the programme from January 2011 to December 2013.

A credit agreement between the government and WB was signed for the “Employment Generation Programme for the Poorest” at the economic relations divisions (ERD) at Sher-e-Banglanagar in the city yesterday, ERD secretary, M. Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and WB country director Ellen Goldstein signed on behalf of their respective sides at a ceremony held at the ERD. It was attended by senior officials of the ERD and WB.

After the signing ceremony M. Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters  the programme would create two crore person-days of employment over a three year period. “The Government is committed to extend the safety net to protect the poorest and the vulnerable population, while ensuring a more efficient, accountable and transparent system”  Bhuiyan said.

Wages to the day labourers will be paid through formal financial channels to ensure the efficiency and transparency of the system, the ERD secretary observed.

The programme will generate employments for the day labourers, particularly for the vulnerable women, who are often out of work during the lean season, he added.

Despite considerable progress in poverty reduction during the past 20 years, many of the poorest women are still without employment, Bhuiyan said, adding that the programme would ensure that the poorest women make up at least one-third of those employed.

“Our mandate is to reduce poverty, which  requires shared growth, in which the poorest are not left behind” said Ellen Goldstein after signing the agreement and added “The WB will provide funds for the  wage-earners, but will also help ensure that funds are well-targeted to those who are most in need,” she noted.

“Building upon the government's earlier employment generation interventions, the programme will target both the poorest upazilas and the poorest households,” she noted adding that “it will address seasonal poverty by allowing the poorest to have an income, which can be scaled up if the situation demands.”

The credit from the International Development Association (IDA) has 40 years to maturity, including a 10-year grace period, and carries a service charge of 0.75 per cent.

Source: The Independent, Bangladesh/19th Dec 2010

If someone goes to 840 Kazi Para, Rokeya Sharani, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216 s/he will see a 5 storied well decorated building tagged by "EXIM Bank Hospital". This building has been hired by EXIM Bank to set up a hospital dedicated for the welfare of the underprivileged people of the society. That is just a single example of EXIM Bank's charity. Exim bank puts aside at least 2% of their annual profit every year for the foundation to conduct Corporate Social Responsibilities(CSR) activities. The mainstream CSR activities that are carried out through this foundation are:

• Healthcare service
  
• Scholarship program for poor brilliant students
  
• Education Promotion Scheme(Interest free loan)
  
• Helping people affected by natural calamities
  
• Helping people who lives in slums
  
• Donation to educational institutions to setup computer lab
  
• Beautification of Dhaka City

Healthcare service: A 5 storied building having 10,000 sft floor space at 840 Kazi Para, Rokeya Sarani,Mirpur, Dhaka-1216 has been hired to set up Exim Bank Hospital. The decoration of this hospital is completed. A doctor has been recruited who is working as a resident director of the hospital. Other doctors and hospital staffs have been in the process of selection through recruitment notice already published in the national dailies.

Scholarship program: This is a stipend package for poor and meritorious students that takes care of the beneficiaries throughout their student life. EXIM Bank Scholarship Programme, launched in 2006 with 61 poor and meritorious students selected from different reputed educational institutions of Dhaka City including Govt. Laboratory High School, Viqarunnissa Noon School and College, Dhaka University, BUET, Dhaka Medical College, etc. enrolled as many as 1000 students from around 150 reputed educational institutions across the country by 31 December 2008. They are enrolled in the this programme to be taken care of for their whole educational life subject to their fulfillment of the eligibility criteria that include satisfactory academic results, non-involvement in student politics, financial insolvency etc. So far Tk. 19.3 million has been disbursed as scholarship under this programme.

Education Promotion Scheme(Interest free loan): Under Education Promotion Scheme, interest-free loan is provided for poor and meritorious students to help them bear monthly educational expenditure including academic expenses, food, accommodation, etc. The quard is disbursed to the selected students in monthly installments till their accomplishing the master degree. Under this programme the students are required to repay the amount (only the principal amount) in long-term monthly installments after they have joined a confirmed job accomplishing their education properly. By 31 December 2008, Tk. 19.7 million was sanctioned to take care of around 138 poor and meritorious students from a number of reputed educational institutions like Dhaka University, Chittagong University, Dhaka Medical College, BUET, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology etc.

Helping people affected by natural calamities: Another vital area they are dealing with as a part of their CSR activities is helping people to survive natural calamities. Under this welfare programme, EXIM Bank provides relief in cash for flood, fire or cyclone victims and cold-stricken people. The aim of these CSR activities is to help the target group to overcome their provisional sufferings and contribute to the socio-economic growth as soon as possible.

Helping people in slum areas: Besides natural calamities, fire breaks out sometimes in slum areas that guts the shanties and renders the affected people totally helpless. In that situation, they help the victims fight against the hard days and return to normal life.

Donation to educational institutions to setup computer lab: Exim Bank has donated to Dhaka University and Chittagong University to set up two computer labs that will help the students of those universities to acquire ICT knowledge. This will certainly help the students to be ready to take the challenges of this competitive information technology based society.

Beautification of Dhaka City: In response to the call of the Dhaka City Corporation, EXIM Bank has been sharing a good portion of the mammoth task of beautifying the capital since 2005. To make the capital a modern city, enriched with adequate urban amenities, EXIM Bank always joins hands with the government.

In brief, EXIM Bank is greatly involved in the social welfares and that is helping our city and country to a great extent. Initiatives like this are welcome by the common people and they expect more Banks to be involved in such activities. If all the corporate organizations work together, they can build a better Bangladesh in near future. EXIM Bank can be a very good example for the others.

Reference:  

http://www.eximbankbd.com/index.php

Field Tour

Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) has recently signed a participatory deal with Bangladesh Bank to extend and expand the Re-Financing facility in SME sector. K.S. Tabrez, Managing Director of DBBL and Mr. Shukomol Singh Chowdhury, General Manager of SME and special program’s department, has signed the deal for their own organization.

This deal will cover the projects outside Dhaka and Chittagong metropolitan. These projects may come under re-financing facility only after fulfilling certain conditions and the perimeter of the financing will be from Tk.50,000 to Tk.70,00,000.

Executive Director of Bangladesh Bank Mr. Harunur Rashid Chowdhury, Asst. Managing Director of DBBL Mohammad Mosaddikur Rahman, Chief of SME sector Mohammad Abu Kawsar and many other senior officials from both organizations were present in this program.

Press Release: Prothom Alo/17 Dec 2010        

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants Bangladesh Bank (BB) to seriously address concerns with the commercial banks' over exposure to the stockmarket.

“We hope Bangladesh Bank will work diligently to ensure that banks and their subsidiaries take necessary action to mitigate the risks from stock market volatility,” said David Cowen, deputy division chief of IMF for Asia-Pacific and team leader of the visiting team.

An IMF mission visited Bangladesh on December 6-15 to discuss the overall macroeconomic situation under Article IV consultation and possible lending arrangements for $1 billion.

The IMF agreed to lend Bangladesh $1 billion under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme, provided its board approves in February.

The loan will be available on a concession (at less than 1 percent interest rate), but Bangladesh has to give IMF some formal commitments, such as fiscal reforms, monetary operations and moves to strengthen the financial sector.

The IMF team looks concerned with stockmarket volatility and the banks' over-involvement in it. Cowen said the banking sector, as a whole, needs risk-based supervision to ensure new capital adequacy requirements.

He said Bangladesh Bank (BB) as the regulator has issued a number of circulars, including setting the investment limit at 10 percent of a bank's liabilities, to reduce risk exposure of banks to the stockmarket.

“BB should closely monitor that all those regulations are being followed by the banks. If necessary, other action may be taken,” said the IMF team leader. The IMF also advised the central bank to continue work with the Securities and Exchange Commission in this regard.

On the cap imposed by BB on the bank lending rates, Cowen said, “We want removal of most of the caps and the banks should be allowed greater flexibility in setting the rates."

On Bangladesh's macroeconomic outlook, the IMF said the country will grow better in the current fiscal year because of improvements in garment exports and investment demand.
“Growth is expected to be slightly above 6 percent this fiscal year and inflation at an average of 7 percent on anticipated moderation of commodity price increases,” said Cowen in his written statement.

The IMF observed that the balance of payment (BOP) will be under pressure due to a significant increase in import payments for fuel, food and cotton. In addition, remittance is expected to fall on a year-on-year basis for the ongoing decline in migrant worker outflow, adding pressures on the BOP.

The budget deficit is also likely to increase by 0.75 percentage points of GDP to around 4 percent this year, it said.

Source: The Daily Star, Bangladesh/16th Dec 2010

Bangladesh Bank has recently finalized their independent pay scale for its employee. According to the new pay scale the Executive Director's scale is thirty four thousand and five hunderd taka (Tk.34,500) and on that s/he will draw a salary of fifty two thousand four hundred and fifty taka (Tk.52,450) whcih was fifty thousand nine hundred and fifty taka (Tk.50,950) before. It has been finalized yesterday afternoon in a Cabinet Secretarie's office in a meeting of the Secretaries of Bangladesh Bank's Independent Pay Scale Finalizing committee. It has been informed that the new pay scale will come in effect after the approval of the Minister Cabinet.

Cabinet Secretary M. Abdul Aziz chaired the meeting where Finance Secretary Dr. Mohammad Tareq, Banking Secertary Shafiqur Rahman Patwary and DG of Bangladesh Bank Murshid Kuli Khan were present. Assistant Director's Pay scale of Bangladesh Bank has beed settled to eleven thousand and five hundered (Tk.11,500) and scale of General Manager and other officers' increased upto thousand taka.

Source: Amar Desh/15 Dec 2010