Finance Minister AMA Muhith has said the Grameen Bank Board of Directors is going to appoint a new managing director for the bank soon, as a case against that appointment had recently been resolved.
“We have failed to run Grameen Bank smoothly because of intervention by Professor Yunus and we have now almost cleared the obstruction to arrange an election [for the board of directors],” the finance minister told journalists after a meeting with US Ambassador Marcia Stephens Bloom Bernicat at his secretariat office yesterday.
The government wanted Grameen Bank to grow its own way without any type of outside intervention, he claimed.
The members of the commission that would hold the election for the Grameen Bank have already been selected, but a district judge who will act as the chief election commissioner was yet to be selected, Muhith said.
Law Minister Anisul Huq will select the chief election commissioner for the Grameen Bank election, Muhith said, adding that the appointment would be made after his return from the World Bank and IMF’s Spring meeting.
Grameen Bank used to cover 95% of the country’s micro-credit sector in 1986-87, a figure that was now only 25%, Muhith also pointed out.
Meanwhile, Tahsina Khatun, a woman director of the Grameen Bank board, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that if it was under the Grameen Bank’s power, then a new polls committee would have already been selected and the election would have taken place.
“We do not know about the fate of the case regrading the appointment of Grameen Bank MD, but it is true that without a selection committee [for picking an MD], the government itself will appoint the new MD.
“We will again protest about the matter as the government will form its selection committee with its own sympathisers,” she said.
