Green Banking
Banks asked to form body comprising risk management committee
Bangladesh Bank on Tuesday asked scheduled banks to form a high-powered committee comprising risk management committee of directors from the board to review the banks’ environmental policies and strategies for governing the green banking activities.
To this end, the BB issued a circular to managingdirectors of all banks saying that the banks would get more time to implement the green banking policy under second and third phase as they failed to implement it within the certain period set by the central bank. The BB circular said that the central bank had earlier asked the banks to form the high-powered committee comprised of directors from the Board. According to the Banking Companies Act 1991 (Amended up to 2003), there could only be two committees comprising the board members — Audit Committee and Executive Committee — and the committees were supposed to be responsible to review policy, it said. The Banking Companies Act, 1991 (amended up to 2013), each banking company will have to form a risk management committee comprising the members of the board. In view of this context, the risk management committee comprising the members of the board of all banks will review the green banking policy, the BB circular said. A BB official said that the risk management committee would review the credit risk and other risk-related activities of the banks, so the central bank asked the committee to review the environment risk of the credit disbursed by the banks. The experience from on-site and off-site supervision shows that banks scheduled before 2013 will require more time for implementing green banking policy under second and third phase where the deadlines were December 31, 2012 and December 31, 2013 respectively, the circular said. Under the circumstances, the BB has decided to revise the time frame for implementing green banking activities under Phase-II and Phase-III. Time frame for 47 banks (scheduled before 2013) for implementation of green banking activities under Phase-II and Phase-III will be December 31, 2014 and June 30, 2015 respectively, the BB circular said.
-With New Age input
