Kamal to sit with private banks Sunday
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will sit with the chairmen and managing directors of private banks on Sunday to discuss the latest situation in the financial sector.
The meeting will be held at the central bank headquarters in Dhaka where National Board of Revenue Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir will also be present.
This will be the first official visit of Kamal to the central bank after he assumed the position of the finance minister in January this year.
The financial institutions division of the finance ministry yesterday sent a letter to the central bank instructing it to organise the meeting.
Now, the central bank will write to the chairmen and MDs of private banks asking them to take part.
The meeting will highlight the rising default loans, high interest rate on lending and the financial scams in the banking sector. At the end of March, default loans in the banking sector totalled Tk 110,873 crore, up 25.15 percent from a year earlier. The sponsors of private banks had earlier promised to set 6 percent and 9 percent interest rates for deposit and lending respectively but majority of them have failed to keep their word.
The finance minister may ask them to bring down the interest rate on lending as per the commitments.
The relaxed rescheduling facility for defaulters may also be discussed at the meeting. A set of new instructions will emanate from the meeting to ensure the stability in the banking sector, the BB official said.
