FE Report
Although many of the developing countries have started practicing corporate social responsibility (CSR) on a larger scale, Bangladesh is still lagging far behind them mainly for lack of complete guidelines on such welfare activities.
Speakers at the Annual Banking Conference 2014 expressed the view Sunday while highlighting the urgency for a proper policy guideline as many of the enterprises and companies are in the dark about it and thus could not make a start on the best practices in this matter.
Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) organized the two-day annual conference on the state of country's banking sector to find out ways and means of addressing the problems and challenges the financial institutions now facing.
Dewan Muktadir-Al-Mukit of Eastern University presented a keynote paper on CSR activities at the plenary session on the second day, portraying the present status of CSR activities being performed by the country's financial institutions. Dhaka University Business faculty Dean Prof Shibli Rubayet Ul Islam chaired the session.
According to the paper, the common CSR practices by various firms in Bangladesh are concentrated mainly on poverty alleviation, healthcare, education, charity activities, cultural enrichment, youth development, women empowerment and patronizing sports and music.
Although several sectors have been identified, no structural guidelines or acts have been formulated in this regard. So, the paper said, the firms shy away from practicing CSR activities.
Eastern Bank Managing Director Ali Reza Iftekhar, DFID Team Leader David Munro, Independent University Professor Dr. Sarwar Uddin Ahmed and BIMB Director Dr. Shah Md. Ahsan Habib took part in the discussion.
Four more papers on sustainable banking, farmers' access to formal credit market, green-banking policies and practices and financial inclusion of low-income working women were also presented at the session.
Dr. Jahirul Hoque in his paper on sustainable banking said the role of banks in contributing towards sustainable development is potentially enormous because of their intermediary role in the economy.
In case of Bangladeshi commercial banks, he alleged, the ethical, social, environmental issues are not given due weight by the bank authorities in their regulatory bodies.
"As a result, creating sustainable banking poses a big question in case of the commercial banks of the country."
Dr. Jahirul urged the bank authorities to play a vital role in sustainable banking through their lending, borrowing, economic, environmental and CSR decisions.
Quoting from various studies, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) Professor Dr. Pinki Shah in his paper on 'Financing inclusion of low-income working women' pointed out that female economic activities account for 52.7 percent of the economy while earn less than half the incomes of their male counterparts.
Women's involvement, according to her paper, in the country's formal economic activities remained low in terms of employment rates, self-employment and earned income compared to that of the men.
The paper also revealed inadequate and insignificant access of low-income working women to the banking services and urged the government as well as the central bank to play more proactive role to set up special schemes for financing and including these low income earners.
Another paper, on green banking, by Dr. SM Mahfuzur Rahman highly appreciated the central bank for taking the initiatives of introducing green banking through a three-phase policy being implemented by the scheduled banks.
The green-banking activities of 42 scheduled banks were assessed in the keynote. According to Mahfuz, the state-owned banks rank low in performance while the foreign banks operating in the country are having better achievements.
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