Speakers at a programme criticised Thursday abuses of mobile banking that already started affecting the remittance inflow and recommended the central bank to take proper action to address the problem.
They were also critical of publishing expensive annual reports by the banks, which they argued being done by misleading rules and regulations concerned.
The speakers, mostly bankers and academics, were speaking at a programme organised by Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) in the city. They expressed their views on 10 research publications by the BIBM.
Deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan joined the function as the chief guest while director general of the BIBM Dr Toufic Ahmad Choudhury presided over it.
In response to research findings on the lack of coordination between the off-site and on-site supervision by the central bank, Mr Razee expressed concern that many of the banks send un-reliable data to BB, which was planning to impose penalties for the banks responsible for providing such distorted data.
Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled, a former deputy governor of BB, said some people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Singapore were involved in sending money by using a particular mobile banking system to their Dhaka destinations and later they [local part of the mobile banking system] were sending the money to their relatives in the country.
He claimed that he saw many people were also active in Singapore and requested the central bank to show its guard as the central bank was more independent now than any time before.
"I saw many doing it just in front of Mostafa Centre of Singapore," Mr Khaled said.
Yasin Ali, a professor (supernumerary) at the BIBM, said the mobile banking was being misused by some people and urged the central bank to devise an appropriate measure to arrest it. "This is very much urgent to arrest such misuses…"
BB deputy governor Mr Razee said the central bank has deployed research teams to find out the genuine reasons behind the fall of remittance by 17 per cent until December last despite the fact that the number of expatriates went up.
SA Chowdhury, a former faculty at the BIBM and a banker, said the government might think possible ways to stop abuse of mobile banking like the ones Sri Lanka and two states of India had introduced.
They launched an anti-hundi programme by giving advance salaries to the expatriates so that they could send their money to their near ones at a time when they receive late salaries.
"To my view this mechanism may work for Bangladesh to arrest the hundi and attract formal ways to send money," Mr Chowdhury said.
Helal Ahmed Chowdhury, another supernumerary professor, said the annual reports sent to the shareholders through the courier services even without proper address, leading to chaos in the annual general meetings.
However, a paper on the mobile banking on financial inclusion finds that there were many challenges in the new type of banking.
While presenting a paper, a faculty of the BIBM Ms Kaniz Rabbi said the recent trend in frauds, extortions and social crimes were being done by using the mobile financial services.
She suggested creation of a national fundamental statistics of the clients called KYC (know your client) to stop the frauds.
A paper on the cost, accessibility and environment aspect of the annual report, the banks and corporate bodies of the country were commonly publishing their annual reports in a bigger size for highlighting their activities.
Presenting another paper, Dr Md Mahabbat Hossian said some information is even being repeated in different sections.
Quoting a commercial bank, he said a bank had published 10,000 copies of annual report for VIPs at a cost of Tk 190 each and 1,46,000 regular copies at a cost of Tk 90 each.
He, however, suggested publishing the abridged version of the annual report to minimise the cost while publishing the details on the websites.
Source:
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2017/03/10/63917/Stop-mobile-banking-abuses
