Bangladesh Bank will formulate a separate pay scale for its employees once the national pay scale is implemented, said Governor Atiur Rahman.
He said the raise of salaries will be 10% of civil servants’ salaries and there will also be 16 grades like as the national pay structure.
“We have already discussed the matter at the board of directors meeting on Wednesday,” Atiur Rahman told Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
According to him, the hike to be proposed could be low if it is prepared right now. He said finance secretary told the board that he was yet to go through National Pay Scale report and so it would take some time to execute a separate pay scale for BB.
“So we will place separate pay scale proposal to the board after that (implementation of national pay scale),” said Atiur.
Governor argued that the central bank is a profitable organisation and the governor can provide a separate pay scale for the bank.
He also said: “To attract meritorious students, we must raise salaries.”
Currently, Bangladesh Bank employees receive five yearly bonuses in addition to salaries.
In its report recently, the National Pay and Services Commission (NPSC) also realised the necessity of a separate pay structure for the central bank staff as the bank’s own wealth and financial strength is sufficient to maintain the hike.
In November last year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved a separate pay scale for the state-owned banks, but it could not be implemented because of legal complications.
The argument was that the central bank is an autonomous organisation and cannot be brought under a same pay structure with state-owned banks, bringing forth the issue of a separate pay scale for BB.
In this circumstance and competitiveness with private banks, the parliamentary body on finance ministry recently recommended making two separate pay scales – one for the central bank and other for the four state-owned banks.
In the proposal that the PM had signed last year, there were 11 salary grades; the proposed basic pay for the lowest grade was Tk6,000 and Tk55,000 for the highest grade.
Currently, the state-owned banks and financial institutions get their salaries under the existing 20-grade pay scale for government servants.
The NPSC coined a 16-grade pay scale for government employees in the report that it had recently submitted to the government, recommending Tk80,000 as the highest basic pay.
The private commercial banks all have their own salary structures, under which, a top official of one of these banks can get up to Tk14 lakh per month.
The commission recommended that the BB board of directors can implement a separate pay scale by taking permission from Finance Division. But the number of grades should not be higher or lower than the 16-grade proposed by the commission.
The NPSC report says the staff of the central bank need a separate pay scale because their activities are directly related with the movement of the country’s economy and also because they work with global financial institutions.
Another reason is that the central bank employees of some of the neighbouring countries get more than what their counterparts here in Bangladesh get, the commission says.
BB and the four state-owned banks have 61,000 employees in total. Of them 4,958 work for BB, 23,363 for Sonali Bank, 15,146 for Janata Bank, 13,558 for Agrani and Rupali has 4,293 employees.
