Padma Oil Company, Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited and Export Import (EXIM) Bank of Bangladesh on Sunday declared dividends for the year that ended respectively on June 30 and December 31, 2011.

The Board of Directors of Padma Oil recommended 50 percent cash dividend (Tk 5.00 per share of Tk 10.00 each) and 50 percent stock dividend for the year ended on June 30, 2011.

The annual general meeting of the company will be held on June 28 at Main Installation, Guptakhal, Patenga, Chittagong while June 11 has been fixed as the record date, according to the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) web post.

The Board of Directors of Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited announced 25 percent stock dividend for the year that ended on December 31, 2011.

The annual general meeting of the Bank will be held on June 19 at the Hall of Fame, Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the city.

Meanwhile, the Board of Directors of EXIM Bank recommended only 14 percent stock dividends for the year that ended on December 31, 2011.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012

Bangladesh Bank has asked two state-owned banks and one private commercial bank not to provide any further loan to Rahman Group as a number of sister concerns of the company have become loan defaulters with huge amount owed to different commercial banks.

The banks are: Sonail Bank, Agrani Bank and IFIC Bank.

Seven wings of the Rahman Group owe a total of Tk 3.15 billion to the three banks.

The central bank in its directive also asked the banks to take legal actions against the company, owned by one Fazlur Rahman, for rescheduling their default loans through illegal procedures.

The banking division of the finance ministry has also given its consent to the banks to take legal actions against the company for not paying the installments of the loans, a senior official of the banking division said.

The concerned authorities of the banks will have to take departmental action against their corrupt officials who helped the company to reschedule default loans through illegal procedures.

Earlier in March this year, some officials of Sonail Bank, Narayanganj branch, allegedly revised the installments of Tk 2.53 billion loan given to seven companies of Fazlur Rahman without prior permission of senior branch official, the BB report said.

Sonail Bank’s total outstanding loan with its Narayanganj branch stands at Tk 24.78 crore.

The seven companies owned by Fazlur Rahman are M/SRahman Spinning Mills (Pvt) Ltd, M/S Rahman Hosiery Dyeing and Finishing Mills, M/S Olympia Knitting industries(Pvt) Ltd, M/S Jasy Hosiery Garments (Pvt), M/S Rahman Hosiery Garments (Pvt) Ltd ( Rahman group combined ), M/S Rahman Hosiery Garments (Pvt) Ltd and M/S Fazlur Rahman Industries (Pvt) Ltd.

In Agrani Bank, two Rahman Group companies, with a total loan of Tk 34.70 crore, rescheduled repayment of loan illegally without prior permission of concerned authorities, according to the central bank report .

The two companies are M/S Fazlur Rahman and Co (Pvt) Ltd, and M/S Al-Afrafat Trading Company (Pvt) Ltd.

According to the BB report, in 2011, there was no trace of M/S Al-Afrafat Trading Company Company while M/S Fazlur Rahman and Co (Pvt) Ltd became defaulter with Agrani Bank.

Private commercial bank, IFIC, detected that the repayment of default loans of three Fazlur Rahman companies are irregular and rescheduled illegally. These Fazlur Rahman companies are: M/S Rahman and Company (Pvt), M/S Rahman Spinning Mills (Pvt) Ltd, and M/S Rahman Hosiery Dyeing and Finishing Mills (Pvt) Ltd.

Total loans of IFIC Bank given to three Fazlur Rahman companies stands at Tk 26.70 crore, according to the report.

While contacted, the Chairman and Managing director of Rahman Group, Fazlur Rahman, said if the loans of companies are not rescheduled in proper time in the future, all companies of Rahman Group may close down.

A total of 20000 officials and workers may loose their jobs, he added.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman, speaks at the formal launching of BB’s online library and e-news clippings at the Bank’s conference room on Sunday.

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman on Sunday stressed the need to digitise the country’s banking and financial sector as the first step towards building the digital Bangladesh.

He said the central bank has already undertaken all out efforts to digitise the activities of Bangladesh Bank as well as the overall banking sector of the country.

The BB governor was addressing a programme marking the formal launching of BB’s online library and e-news clippings at its conference room.

Atiur said as part of the massive digitisation endeavor the central bank has started modernising its library maintaining international standard.

He said the central bank has enhanced its supervisory role sufficiently for strengthening the institutional good governance of the banks side by side its risk reduction; building a firm footing for risk management and also enhancing the capability of the central bank.

He hoped that central bank will be the most digitised institution in Bangladesh very shortly.

Deputy Governor Nazneen Sultana, Executive Director M Ahsanullah, general manager of IT-OCD Qazi Nasir Ahmed, Assistant Director Shasanka Kumar Singha also spoke on the occasion.

Nazneen Sultana said skilled manpower and updated information both are similarly important for ensuring expected and timely development of any organisation.

Archiving various news on national and international banking, finance and socio-economic conditions, providing news clipping service to the end users, single point access of all the archived news, alert readers about the news clippings according to reader’s interest list are the vital objectives of developing the e-library.

The central bank is working to introduce two modern information service centers named “Institutional Repository (Archive)” and “Audio Visual, Language and Cyber Section” immediately.

Data on BB, banking sector and socio-economic situation of the country will be available on both the sites.

central bank officials will be able to log-in to both the sites by using network ID and password in the Bangladesh Bank’s website.

IT operations and communication department of BB worked both to develop the online library and e-news clipping management software.

Presently there are 33682 books, 7210 e-books, 520 CD-ROM, 25,000 e-journals, 655 journals articles, 13 magazines, 21333 journals in the archives, 29 daily news papers, 3 foreign daily news papers, 648 e-annual report, have been preserved in the Bangladesh Bank Library.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012

Food Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque, addresses a special meeting of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank at a city hotel on Sunday.

Food Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque on Sunday sought cooperation from the SAARC member countries to make the SAARC Food Bank a real success.

The minister made the call while talking to reporters after attending the 5th special meeting of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank at a city hotel.

“Political promises have turned into a hollow as some issues relating to the food bank are yet to be settled,” the minister said.

Therefore, SAARC member nations should come forward to make it fully functional, he added.

Established in 2007, SAARC Food Bank aims to help the member states with food deficit to meet their emergency needs.

For this, every member state pledged to create a certain food reserve for the bank.

Abdur Razzaque also expressed dissatisfaction as prices of foods, concession rate and operational modalities are yet to be finalised for the food bank, since the member nations did not take any unilateral stance over those issues.

The cross-cutting issues will set an appropriate threshold for a member country to access the food bank resources as well as determining the prices and methods for movement and delivery of food grains.

Once the food bank becomes functional, it would open up new opportunities for the SAARC members during any emergency and production shortfall,” Dr Razzaque added. “Bangladesh can keep a reserve of 0.2 million tonnes of food grains, against its total capacity of 1.7 million tonnes,” he said.

A World Bank-funded project to build up a giant silo would increase the country’s food storage capacity in future, the minister added.

Presided over by Food Division Secretary Barun Dev Mitra, the opening session of the meeting was also attended by a representative of SAARC Secretary General and members of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012

Regulatory bindings have forced private commercial banks to roll out more money to the farm sector in the current fiscal year, according to data from Bangladesh Bank.

Agriculture credit disbursed by private banks, both local and foreign, rose 42.68 percent to Tk 3,471 crore in the 10 months through April from Tk 2,433 crore in the same period a year ago.

“We have made farm credit compulsory and set an annual target for banks,” SM Moniruzzaman, an executive director of the central bank, told The Daily Star yesterday.

If any bank fails to achieve the target, it will have to deposit the same amount to the central bank that will pay only 5 percent interest on the fund.

It means an interest loss to a bank if it does not provide agriculture credit at 10 percent rate. “It might compel the banks to speed up farm credit disbursement,” Moniruzzaman said.

As the local private and foreign banks have a limited number of branches, the BB has allowed them to take help from microfinance institutions to disburse the loans across the country.

Farm credit disbursed by state and private banks combined increased 5.67 percent to Tk 10,200 crore during July-April against an annual target of Tk 13,800 crore, which is 9.4 percent higher than the previous year's target, the data shows.

The total disbursement will stand at Tk 10,853 crore if loans for sharecroppers disbursed through BRAC and credit provided by state-owned BRDB are taken into account.

The central bank has adopted a new agricultural credit policy, strengthened the monitoring system and opened help desks to boost farm credit that remained ignored for years.

According to the policy, no report from the Credit Information Bureau is required for a bank to lend up to Tk 1.5 lakh in agriculture loans. A sanctioned loan must be distributed in 10 days, the policy says. The loan can also be distributed through a farmer's account opened with Tk 10.

If anybody faces difficulty getting the agriculture loan he can lodge complaints with the central bank's help desk at its headquarters or regional offices.

An inspection team has been deployed at the BB headquarters to monitor hassle-free disbursement of loans and help the farmers use the money properly.

The Daily Star/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012