Finance Minister AMA Muhith will sit today with three secretaries and NBR chairman to discuss about strategies to bring back discipline in the country’s scam-hit state-owned banks.
He will also discuss about formulating a tougher policy to appoint chairmen and directors for the state-owned banks.
The meeting will be attended by Banking Division Secretary Dr M Aslam Alam, Planning Secretary Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, Economic Relations Division Secretary Mohammad Mejbahuddin and National Board of Revenue Chairman Md Ghulam Hussain at the finance minister’s secretariat office.
State-owned Sonali Bank and BASIC Bank suffered large loan scams like those of Hall-Mark and Bismillah Group.
The state-owned banks have so far seen appointment of chairmen and directors loyal to the ruling party.
“The existing policy is not strong to prevent politically affiliated being appointed as directors and chairmen.”
“We have already taken steps to make state-owned banks’ internal auditing system sturdy after the large Hall-Mark scam,” he said.
Dr M Aslam hinted that the BASIC Bank Chairman might be removed before expiry of his tenure.
Sonali Bank’s Hall-Mark loan scam involved an amount of Tk3,547 crore while the Bismillah Group scam involved over Tk1,175 crore.
The central bank investigations unearthed irregularities involving loans worth around Tk4,500 crore in the last three years.
Besides, the meeting will try to seek solutions to different problems like revenue generation, foreign fund disbursement and increasing implementation rate of Annual Development Programmes (ADP).
About the today’s meeting, officials said it would further discuss about revenue matters related with NBR in next fiscal’s budget and the streamlining the country’s banking sector.
Coordination among the ministries and divisions will also be discussed to ensure implementation of budget, said an official.
Topics like purchase and implementation capacities of the ministries and divisions and financial process of budget will also come up, sources said.
Besides, talks will be about introducing a new presentation style of the budget from FY2015-16.
The style will accommodate revenue and development budgets like many other countries in the world.
