News that customer service at state-owned Sonali Bank has been termed as the most unsatisfactory by Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir is nothing surprising at this point, and is yet another indicator of how far behind state-owned banks (SOBs) remain when compared to private financial institutions and banks.
The dire state of our SOBs has been well documented; this newspaper has editorialized on this issue numerous times over the years. Year after year, the government continues to back these loss-making SOBs, expecting that something will change.
Yet, year after year, it remains the same.
Be it the bad loans that continue to pile up and weaken our economy, to the gross culture of nepotism, corruption, and impunity that is rampant in these institutions, to the poor quality of customer service for the general public who deserve nothing but our sympathies for needing to bank with these SOBs in the first place, it is about time we said enough is enough.
Why is it that we fail to hold these SOBs accountable for their lack of performance on a yearly basis? Why is it that the strictest of rules and regulations are applied when it comes to private sector institutions, but somehow, these appear to be completely absent when SOBs are the ones being evaluated?
Things must change and Bangladesh is running out of time. Unless there is a proper, well-thought out plan to fix the myriad issues that continue to plague these SOBs, there is the very real risk of the entire banking sector being dragged down and jeopardizing the entire economy from fulfilling its potential.
