BB to BASIC Bank
Rabiul Alam: The Central Bank has issued some recommendations for BASIC Bank with a view to stop its corruption, irregularities and mismanagement.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank has directed the BASIC Bank to realize Tk 20,162 crore from top 20 defaulters through legal action or negotiations.
It also asked the bank to make work plan to collect the money and explain the causes of rising categorized default loans amount at Tk 7,895 crore.
Apart from this, a 29 point recommendations including ensuring punishable actions against the people included in financial irregularities of the bank have been submitted.
These recommendations have been made in order to stopping corruptions and improving overall situations of the bank.
It has already sent as report to Financial Institutions Division of Finance Ministry, sources said.
Central Bank has made a review report on financial activities of BASIC Bank until 2019. The report is made examining all sorts of indexes of 72 branches of the bank across the country.
The report revealed that, BASIC Bank had Tk 13,831 crore debts in 2019. Among those, Tk 7,576 crore debts were defaulted loans and its amount of loss rose to Tk 327 crore for different reasons.
Contacted Arijit Chowdhury, Additional Secretary (Commercial Bank) of Financial Institutions Division of Ministry of Finance said, “Follow up report will be made in accordance with the review report of Central Bank from our side. Financial Institutions Division used to arrange meetings with state-owned commercial and specialized banks in every three months. Next steps will be taken in the meeting following the discussion on the report.”
“After this kind review report, Bangladesh Bank (BB) usually holds discussion meetings with respective bank about the problems and different directions are given in the meeting.” he added.
While asked about the issue, Saleh Uddin Ahmed, former governor of BB said that, everything wouldn’t be dissolved only giving the review report rather stern actions have to be taken on this regard. If anyone of governing body of the bank is involved with these irregularities, stern actions have to be taken against him. Otherwise, this report will not bring any benefits.
The recommendations emphasized on different issues including monitoring must be strengthened from the meeting of governing body about internal financial irregularities of the bank.
In term of writing off defaulted loans, directives of Central Bank have be abided by and audit of the amounts taken from defaulters must be sent to Central Bank in three months interim period.
Strategies of implementing small, mid and large plans taken by the BASIC Bank earlier in achieving efficiency must be defined.
Besides, work plans and abiding directives of Central Bank to ensure liability and accordance of properties were stressed in the report.
Other recommendations included reducing risks providing loans to small and mid entrepreneurs altering the system of providing loans to a small number of people.
Taking effective steps to collect money from non-financial institutions, recruiting advocates to dissolve cases filed by the bank immediately, following directives of Central Bank to eliminate overall risks, increasing loans distribution among female entrepreneurs, examining relevant policies for fair management of risks every year were stressed. The report also recommended for taking necessary steps to implement Core Banking Solution and taking JAMAN-BASIC tower under control.
Earlier, a corruption of Tk 3,885 crore by the BASIC Bank was unearthed. A big amount of money was plundered in the name of loans.
Among those, Tk 429 crore was taken by fraudulent deposit; Tk 16 crore in the name of unsubstantial institutions; Tk 635 crore without any deposition or a small portion of deposit.
Besides, Tk 21 crore was given as loans and Tk 58 crore was given in rubric sector ignoring the directives of the bank committee.
BB has once again beefed up surveillance on BASIC Bank centering the irregularities revealed by the report.
However, the report mentioned that Bangladesh Bank issued Core Risk Management Guidelines in 2003. Though, one era has passed after it, the guidelines are not being followed properly. The situation is yet to be improved.
