The finance ministry on Tuesday injected Tk 2,205 crore to state-owned Sonali Bank and Rupali Bank to shore up the struggling commercial banks from capital crunch and keep them afloat. Another Tk 1,895 crore would be given to Agrani and Janata banks tomorrow, a senior finance ministry official told New Age. Earlier, the ministry had decided to pump in Tk 4,100 crore to four state-owned commercial banks—Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali—as huge capital shortfall made the banks virtually handicapped.
Of Tk 4,100 crore, Sonali has been injected with Tk 1,995 crore and Rupali with Tk 210 crore. Two remaining SCBs–Agrani and Janata—would be given Tk 1,895 crore, of which Tk 1,081 crore for Agrani, sources confirmed.
The finance division under the finance ministry on Tuesday issued separate office orders releasing the funds in favour of Sonali and Rupali banks.
The combined capital shortfall of the four SCBs stood at Tk 8,863 crores as of last September.
However, the finance ministry last week asked the SCBs to pursue a slew of reform measures including revising their policies on credit and risk management to become eligible for recapitalisation fund from the exchequer to fix their soaring capital shortfall.
The conditions imposed on four banks concerned are in line with the spirit of memorandum of understandings the Bangladesh Bank and the banks had signed a couple of months back.
The banks have to revise their separate credit and credit risk management policies, prepare their individual policies for implementation (process manual) of the core risk management guidelines with detailed roadmap, form core risk management committees comprising directors of the respective banks and devising their own internal control and compliance policies.
Furthermore, according to the directives of the finance ministry, Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali are liable to prepare their loan review policies in accordance with their respective MoUs, revise their human resource development programmes, prepare three-year business plans, develop liquidity risk management policies and initiate quarterly stress tests systems.
‘The four banks have so far implemented most of the conditions attached to become eligible for fresh capital,’ a finance official told New Age.
Managing director of Rupali Bank Ltd Farid Uddin said the fresh injection of capital to their bank would help it enormously.
Courtesy of New Age
