Govt won’t take WB funds for modernisation of state banks

The government will not take the World Bank funds to modernise state-run banks and financial institutions. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council meeting on Tuesday that the government has its own fund to implement the project. “We will do the project with our own funds. We want no foreign agency get involved with the project,” she said as quoted by officials who attended the meeting. After the Ecnec meeting, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said prime minister does recommended not involving foreign agencies with the state banks modernisation project. The World Bank’s proposed fund was Tk1,580 crore and the government would bear Tk395 crore. The project is supposed to start this fiscal year. The project is aimed at improving performance of the state-run banks, that together account for 30% of total banking sector assets, by automating the business and transaction process. The project will implement a modern IT infrastructure to support stronger cyber security centralised process, branch connectivity, an enterprise-wide e-mail system and ATM network among others. In February 2016, instructions to steal 951m from Bangladesh Bank were issued via the SWIFT network. Five transactions issued by hackers, worth $101m and withdrawn from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, succeeded, with $20m traced to Sri Lanka and $81m to the Philippines. An amount of $18m was later recovered.