For the first time ever in Bangladesh, BRAC Bank Ltd. (BBL) has launched Bangladesh's first e-commerce banking platform in alliance with Visa, thereby opening an opportunity for Bangladeshi citizens to use Visa cards for shopping online. Any Bangladeshi with internet access now can shop online with a Visa card or any card issued by BRAC Bank. Attending as the chief guest, Dr. Atiur Rahman, Governor of Bangladesh Bank, inaugurated the country’s first e-commerce banking system at a city hotel.

Md. A. (Rumee) Ali, Chairman of BBL, Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of BBL and Uttam Nayak, Group Country Manager (India and South Asia) of Visa were present along with senior officials, leading merchants and clients.

“The central bank has continuously been facilitating bringing banking to the doorsteps of the general mass. This online shopping is another milestone in that journey. I am happy to inaugurate this service brought first time in Bangladesh and that too by a Bangladeshi bank,” the Banglaesh Bank Governor said.
Md. A. (Rumee) Ali, said, “I think this will pave the way for many companies to start doing business online.
This hopefully will be the start of online business revolution for Bangladeshi companies enabling them to keep up with the rest of the world and innovate how they interact with their customers.”
Uttam Nayak in his speech said that e-commerce would not only reduce cost of transaction but also save couple of hours rather than shopping physically.
E-commerce facilitates remote payments which are better than face-to-face payments, he said and adding it will give an opportunity to include more people in banking transaction, one’s who buying goods and other’s who selling goods.
Firoz Ahmed Khan, Head of Retail Banking, while demonstrating the new service features at the launching ceremony said that the new shopping platform would work just any other developed online stores work.
Consumers can browse and choose their products on either the online super-stores or individual shops and then they can add the products to their cards through checking out finally, they simply need to put their details from BBL or Visa card.
Online ticket booking with ones credit card and general retail purchases online have been something many credit card holders have been waiting to be able to do for years while many working Bangladeshis facing problems as the shops are normally closed at 8 pm., he said.
BRAC Bank online shopping is open for 24 hours making it possible for retail products, companies and stores to keep earning long after shopping hours are over, he added.

Bangladesh Bank will keep on its efforts to restore the normalcy at the bourses and will do everything possible to bring back investors confidence, BB high officials said yesterday.

They, however, ruled out the criticisms that BB initiatives to contain soaring inflation contributed to the debacle of the capital market. Rather, some vested quarters’ interests and somewhat policy makers’ failure were active behind the fall, they observed.

“BB mainly deals with the containment of the inflation through an increased reserve. But, it can’t be blamed for the volatility of the share market,” SK Sur Choudhury, executive director, said.

Choudhury ruled out the scheduled banks’ excessive involvement in the share business saying that banks’ present exposure to the capital market is only 3.58 percent or Tk 125.41 billion of the total market of Tk 3508 billion, which played little role in the debacle.

“You won’t see too much problem in the country’s banking sector, but it would have been in a danger if the central bank didn’t take some timely measures in line with the Bank Company Act,” he told journalists adding that banks are now well below their exposure limit--10 percent of their total liabilities--as of this January.

The heated call money rate has also been tamed to 4 to 8 percent, even lower than the rate set by the regulator, he said adding: “The call money rate rose due to mismanagement in some banks.”

News: Daily Sun/Bangladesh/24 Jan 2011

A P.P woven bag factory financed by Sonali Bank Ltd was inaugurated in Dumuria upazila of Khulna yesterday.

Md Humayun Kabir, managing director and CEO of the bank, formally inaugurated the factory, said a press release.

Sonali Bank Khulna Corporate Branch provided the financial support to AK Agro Industries Pvt Ltd to build the factory, the statement added.

Mukul Kanti Saha, Chairman of AK Group, Ashok Kumar Das, managing director of AK Agro Industries Pvt Ltd, Subhash Chandra Singh Roy, director of board of directors, Md Atiqur Rahman, deputy managing director of Sonali Bank, Nowsher Ali Khandakar, bank's manager at its principal office, Md Mahbubul Haque, general manager of bank’s General Manager’s office in Khulna, Nepal Chandra Shaha, deputy general manager of Janata Bank Khulna corporate branch, were also present at the function.

Managing director and CEO of Sonali Bank in his speech expressed his bank’s interest to provide financial supports to employment-friendly industries and urged the entrepreneurs to step forward in this regard.

The authorities of the P.P woven bag factory also thanked Sonali Bank for financing the project.

News: Daily Sun/Bangladesh/24 Jan 2011

International Finance Inv- estment and Commerce (IFIC) Bank Limited held its Annual Managers’ Conference 2011 yesterday to formulate its strategic plan for the year.

“You have to devise a well planned strategy for better performance as the global banking sector has been in downturn and under the grip of recession,” IFIC Bank Chairman Salman F Rahman told the bank officials in Dhaka yesterday.

“We’ve to face another challenge stemming from the central bank’s contractionary monetary policy,” he said.

He also criticised the bank’s mediocre performance in recent years.

“Reputation of a bank depends largely on its manpower and the leadership. But, leadership doesn’t always come from the top,” he opined.

In his introductory speech, M Abdullah, managing director of IFIC Bank, said the banking sector has recently been gripped by liquidity crisis which has also shot up the call money rate to as much as 190 per cent.

“We gathered here to formulate a strategic plan for making an adjustment between the monetary policy and the market reality,” he told the branch managers from across the country.

The bank stood 12th among the private sector banks last year in terms of performance.

News: Daily Sun/Bangladesh/25 Jan 2011

The Country has achieved the lion share of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for which it claimed the UN recognition, and it is on the track to achieve the rest by 2015, Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman said.

“No denying that country developed much in many sectors in last three decades. GDP growth target has been set at 6.7 percent amid global melt down and the present per capital income stands at US$ 751,” Atiur said.

He was addressing the 10th anniversary celebration of Volunteers Association of Bangladesh (VAB) at Agargaon’s LGED auditorium in the city on Saturday.

Bangladesh attained gender equality at the primary and secondary education. It is committed to enrolling all children in primary schools by 2011 and formulated an elaborate and combined education policy to reach the targets.

Mentioning some major gains in country’s education sector, BB Governor said that there are some challenges also at the secondary and its next level of education in the country.

The Governor also lauded VAB initiative of providing education to 40 thousand underprivileged people.

News: Daily Sun/Bangladesh/24 Jan 2011