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ANALYSIS

Fix what needs to be fixed

Let Grameen Bank function as it is

Inam Ahmed
Look at the two examples.
On one hand are the state-owned banks. They are supervised by the Bangladesh Bank but the finance ministry controls their boards. The board members are politically appointed. And all of them are now plagued with corruption. Remember the Hall-Mark case of how over Tk 4,000 crore was siphoned off Sonali Bank? Or the corruption in Basic Bank?
Five state banks account for almost two-
thirds of total default loans in the banking sector mainly because of politically motivated lending and financial crimes, the Financial Stability Report of the Bangladesh Bank says. They together have bad loans of Tk 26,800 crore or 62.7 percent of the total classified loans ofTk 42,730 crore.
We have seen how reluctant the government is in unearthing why Basic Bank, one of the best performing banks, has plummeted and what role its board played in its downfall. We have
FROM PAGE 1 also seen how unwilling the government was in going after the perceived culprits behind the Hall-Mark scandals and how an adviser to the prime minister was let off the hook lightly.
And yet reforms are not being done in these banks. The government takes a lenient view of the crimes being done there. They now need to be recapitalised. In other words this means as the politically strong thieves rob these banks we the taxpayers have to fill up their vaults only to be emptied out again.
Now let's look at the other example, that of Grameen Bank. Since its establishment in 1983 by Dr Yunus, the bank has been so inspiring that the government took special interest in it and participated in the bank's equity (initially it was 25 percent which had slid down to 3 percent before returning to the previous level recently). The government had offered special bonds for Grameen to raise funds.
Eventually, Grameen became a unique model of how a financial institution
can give millions of small loans to the poor (only in August this year it distributed Tk 584 crore in loans) and yet make profit (last year it clocked Tk 145 crore in net profit). It has proven how to manage a huge portfolio of millions of small loans and alter the lives of the poor. It can only remind us of the Bombay Dabbawallahs who every day run millions of lunch boxes for Bombay office-goers to perfection.
Nothing went wrong with Grameen operations until the government suddenly felt that it must be targeted and ripped apart for reasons only it knows. One reason might be the prime minister's animosity towards Yunus. But to get at Yunus, why Grameen has to be ripped apart is a big question.
Grameen was a perfectly running organisation, unlike the state-owned banks. The government in its bid to discredit Yunus had instituted a commission to investigate the "wrongs" in Grameen. So far, this commission has found nothing in its interim report.
So the question arises: when Grameen was running
on solid ground, why this sudden move to bring it under the Bangladesh Bank fold? Outwardly, one may argue that the central bank should oversee the activities of all banks and so should it of Grameen. This might be a naive view of the matter. Why should the government shake up a wrong tree? In our view it is just another attempt to choke an organisation which has performed tremendously well, enough to earn the Nobel and an organisation the international reputation of which the government is unaware of.
The government should better go after the bad boys -the state owned banks - to put them back on the right path rather than grab a good boy and break its backbone. It makes no sense to focus on a respectable organisation which does not deal with big loans and big thieves who are bleeding the state-owned banks rather than the sick financial institutions.
We still believe the government should let Grameen function as it so far has and undertake the task of reforming the state banks.