In order to increase its deposit figure along with liquidity, Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB) has approved a new monthly savings scheme.

The approval was given in the 381st Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bank held at its headquarters with Chairman Prof Dr Shah Nawaj Ali in the chair here today.

Managing Director of the Bank Pradip Qumar Dutta, Directors Abdul Mannan, Dr Rustam Ali Ahmed and Indu Bikash Mondal attended the meeting.

The meeting reviewed overall activities of the Bank and took some important decisions relating to its commercial and administrative matters.

It stressed the need for ensuring transparency and accountability side by side with farmer-friendly banking services for the sake of making the Bank more proactive.

In addition, the Bank should expedite its consumer services for increasing qualitative and quantitative credit flow to potential fields for boosting agricultural output.

General Manager (Operation) Habibur Rahman, General Manager (Audit, Accounts and Recovery) Nishit Qumar Saha and General Manager (Rajshahi division) Abdul Khaleque Khan and Council- Secretary Abu Bakar Siddiqui were also present.

The meeting discussed on how to make the Bank’s operational and commercial activities more dynamic through strengthening the credit support for both farm and non-farm prospective fields.

So, the pro-farmers banking in the specialized Bank must be ensured for cherished development of the region after the optimum use of its existing natural resources.

The meeting emphasised on intensifying the Bank’s activities.

They also discussed to supplement the government’s effort to expand social safety net and ensure poverty reduction and food security.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 27-May-2012

The head of the International Monetary Fund yesterday urged Greeks to pay their taxes, saying she is more concerned about sub-Saharan Africans in poverty than Greeks hit by the economic crisis.

Christine Lagarde told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published online Friday, “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”

The IMF managing director said Greeks should “help themselves collectively” by “all paying their tax”, adding that she thought “equally” about those deprived of public services by the crisis and those involved in tax avoidance.

Caught in a fifth straight year of recession, Greece is struggling to apply a tough austerity overhaul in return for EU-IMF loans, but has already made drastic cuts to public services.

On children affected by the cuts, Lagarde said their parents needed to take responsibility.

“Parents have to pay their tax,” she was quoted as saying.

“I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education,” she added.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 27-May-2012

The benchmark index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) went down last week for a third straight week as investors confidence eroded following fresh petitions challenging securities regulator’s directive on minimum shares holding.

Stock market analysts opined that the market witnessed downward move last week as investors’ confidence deteriorated due to fresh legal challenges of the minimum share holding by company directors in the High Court (HC).

During the week, the DGEN General Index of the premier bourse plunged 194 points or 3.88 per cent to close at 4,798 points.

The broader All Shares Price Index (DSI) also declined 158 points or 3.76 per cent to close at 4,055 points while the DSE-20 Index comprising blue-chip shares lost 117 points or 3.07 per cent to 3,680.

Meanwhile, a group of small stock investors staged demonstration in front of the DSE Building and blasted the SEC as they alleged that the market regulator had not taken its next course of action to compel directors to buy minimum shares as per its previous directive. They also blamed the SEC for the downtrend and cloudy situation in the market.

The week’s total turnover value came down to Tk 14.64 billion last week compared to Tk 17.87 billion in the previous week.

The average daily turnover value also went down and stood at Tk 2.92 billion which was 18.04 per cent lower compared to previous week’s Tk 3.57 billion.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 27-May-2012

The government is likely to sign a deal with a Spanish company tomorrow to set up the much-talked-about World Bank (WB) funded 335 megawatt Siddhirganj power project, a senior government official said.

“We are at the final stage of signing an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) deal with Spanish firm Isolux Ingenieria tomorrow,” Mostafa Kamal, managing director of Electricity Generation Company of Bangladesh (EGCB), said.

Kamal, also chief of the implementing agency, told daily sun Friday that the WB will provide the major portion of the project cost while the rest will come from the domestic sources or other donor agencies.

The government has sought donors’ assistance to mobilise the remaining amount to implement the mega power project, he said.

Earlier, the WB had backtracked from its committed 100 percent financial support for the combined cycle power project supposed to be commissioned within 30 months of the deal signing.

In a letter on 12 January this year, the WB advised the EGCB to look for alternative sources or depend on government funds to mobilise the rest of the project cost.

The WB has already approved the draft agreement with the Spanish company, sources said. The cost of the revised project will rise to $415.1 million from previously estimated $221.1 million, the EGCB boss said.

The WB had committed to provide $221.10 million to implement two units of the peaking power plant at Siddhirganj, each with the capacity of generating 150MW of electricity.

But it disagreed on a proposal to procure equipment from German firm Siemens over graft allegations. The WB then proposed the government to turn the project into a 335-450MW combined cycle one and assured Bangladesh of providing the full amount required for the project.

According to officials, state-owned EGCB invited a tender in October 2010 for the power plant.

The project undertaken in 2004 was delayed due to a long procedure of tendering and re-tendering as the authorities failed to satisfy the WB.

The tender was first invited in 2009 when it was a 300MW-capacity peaking plant project. But the EGCB had to cancel it in response to the WB suggestion.

Later, as per Power Division’s instructions and WB’s suggestions, the EGCB upgraded the project to a 335-450MW combined cycle power plant and quickly invited a tender in November 2010.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 27-May-2012

People make transactions at the ATM machines outside bank branches in central Athens on Thursday. Police say that gangs who may have once eyed ‘hard targets’, - like the banks themselves, or jewelers - are now going after homes of ordinary people, where there is far less risk and often large stashes of cash freshly withdrawn from savings accounts.

LONDON: Greek savers may be gripped by a “great fear that could develop into panic” in the words of President Karolos Papoulias, but many Greeks shifted their money to safer havens in Britain, Switzerland, Germany and Nordic countries long ago.

Worries about a run on Greek banks have rattled Athens this week, after savers withdrew at least 700 million euros on Monday alone, according to minutes of Papoulias’s comments to political leaders posted on the presidency’s website.

It is not only Greeks who are worried about their savings. Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy. And on Thursday, Spain’s Bankia was reported to have seen more than 1 billion euros drained by its customers in the past week.

Greeks are afraid they could be hit by rapid devaluation if the country leaves the European single currency, while customers at Bankia have been rattled by the government’s takeover of the recently floated bank on May 9 and growing uncertainty about the final cost of Spain’s banking reforms.

In Greece, sources at two banks told Reuters that withdrawals on Tuesday had taken place at about the same rate as on Monday.

“The entire Greek banking system is in danger: the banks are now facing the worst of all outcomes, deposit flight,” said Arnaud Poutier, deputy CEO of IG Markets France.

That flight started at least two years ago, as the debt crisis grew more serious.

Greece’s banks have lost 72 billion euros in deposits since the start of 2010, or about 30 percent, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters. Five of Greece’s top banks saw 37 billion euros taken out last year, including 12 billion from EFG Eurobank and 8-9 billion apiece at National Bank of Greece, Piraeus and Alpha Bank.

In February, Evangelos Venizelos, finance minister at the time, said only 16 billion euros had gone abroad, with a third of that going to Britain.

Savers have shifted to property, gold and other banks, or stashed it privately.

In Greece, this slow-speed run on deposits has not caused panic. But that could quickly change if there is a sudden loss of confidence in the banks.

Savers lost faith in Britain’s Northern Rock overnight in September 2008, queueing for hours in the days that followed to take out their cash, despite a guarantee safeguarding most deposits. The British government ended up nationalizing the bank.

“It (Greek withdrawals) is not a huge number in percentage terms, but it is still a very worrying story. But deposit flight has been going on for two years. What we are seeing in the euro zone is a slow-motion bank run,” said Michael Riddell, fund manager at M&G International Sovereign Bond Fund.

Deposits shifted around Europe dramatically last year, analysis of data from more than 120 listed European banks show.

Two Belgian banks, bailed out Dexia and restructured KBC saw their deposits fall by 120 billion euros. The bulk of the change resulted from the Belgian state’s nationalization of Dexia’s Belgian banking business, but retail customers pulled out 7 billion euros from Dexia around the time of its break-up in October 2011.

KBC also sold a banking subsidiary, Centea, leading to reduced deposits, but the majority of its shortfall came from withdrawals by US institutions of money market funds.

The Worldscope data includes the value of money held by the bank or financial company on behalf of its customers, including demand, savings, money market deposits, negotiable debt securities - certificates of deposit, along with foreign office and deposit accounts. Securities sold to customers under repurchase agreements are excluded.

Based on these criteria, some 184 billion euros was taken from France’s biggest listed banks, including around 33 billion from Credit Agricole and 82 billion euros from BNP Paribas.

The reduction in deposits at BNP Paribas was largely due to the withdrawal of US money market funds. The bank actually experienced a 15 billion euro increase in retail deposits within its European domestic network during the period, driven by growth in its two biggest markets, France and Belgium.

Credit Agricole’s own figures show total customer deposits rose by 2.3 billion euros over the same period. The bank does not give an overall figure for European retail deposits.

French banks were hit last year by their heavy exposure to Greece and concerns about their liquidity that forced them to accelerate plans to shrink.

Worries the euro zone crisis would spread also saw about 30 billion euros in deposits leave Italian banks, although inflows to BBVA helped limit the net outflow from Spain.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 27-May-2012