Jillur Rahman / The Legal Voice 24 Media :
“One lakh crores of rupees went out of the bank to buy dollars” Recently, City Bank Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Masrur Arefin has commented that one lakh crore taka has gone out of the bank account just to buy dollars.
He said, once wrong information was spread in our country. However, I will not say that there is no crisis, some banks are in crisis. They are borrowing money from inter banks. Once we had customers flocking to withdraw cash from here. This causes temporary problems. They withdraw the money and keep it in another bank. However, this has not reduced our liquidity, but rather increased it.
He said this at the pre-budget discussion meeting organized by Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI), Dainik Samakal and Channel 24 at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the capital on Wednesday (March 22).
He said, we do not have liquidity crisis. It is true that the customer has withdrawn money from one bank, but they have deposited it again in another bank. It can be said that there is no liquidity crisis but liquidity has increased. Where 17 taka per 100 taka has to be kept as liquid, we now have 25.5 taka liquid in our bank account. As money ran out to buy dollars, the government launched a re-finance scheme worth another 50,000 crore rupees. The market has also held a good position in this.
Masrur Arefin said that political guidelines were not behind the bankruptcy of some of the world’s biggest banks in recent times. People lost confidence and withdrew money, soon after which banks ran into liquidity problems and later went bankrupt. Those who are in crisis have to fix the whole system. It needs to be fixed internally.
