FE Report
A Digital Map of Financial Services in Bangladesh was launched Saturday as the first of its kind in the country.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman was the chief guest at the launching ceremony at the BB Training Academy in the city.
The BB, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) jointly organised the launching ceremony, which was also attended, among others, by Hassan Zaman, chief economist of the BB, and Gregory Chen of the foundation.
Dr Rahman said that using the geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to assess the spatial distribution of bank branches, ATMs, agents and other financial access points, we can generate analysis that can be of great operational value to the commercial sector, the public sector, and for guiding regulatory policy.
The practical tool is essential to generate, disseminate and use knowledge, he said and elaborated how the digital map can practically benefit in different sectors and ways.
It is critical that the new financial mapping tool is used by both BB and MRA in making balanced and sound policy and regulatory decisions such as giving permission of balanced bank branches, ATM, agent and other point of service in certain geographical areas of the country for promoting financial inclusion or SME and agriculture credit to the underserved areas.
The map can also help generate very high-resolution of where poor people live and assess the most effective method of their financial access, safety net programs and money-transfer to the poor; it can also help in liquidity management, he said.
There are many initiatives relating to the concept of a digital Bangladesh Bank which have taken in the last few years. The initiatives include e-commerce such as modernisation of the payments system and financial sector IT infrastructure such as online clearing and settlement of interbank paper based and electronic fund transfers, online credit information bureau, the National Payments Switch (NPS), he said.
These can complement our new Integrated Supervision System, which is our new electronic portal which allows us to monitor many aspects of the financial sector both at the aggregate macro level as well as zoom into branch level data, he said.
The governor, however, laid stress on updating the digital map regularly and sought cooperation all concerned in this connection.
Mr Zaman said that the digital map can be accessed by anyone with access to the internet, and the users will be able to look both at national patterns but also zoom into a specific part of the country. It can be used by regulators, financial providers as well as consumers.
The digital map project was sponsored by the Gates Foundation and facilitated by BB and MRA and implemented by a specialist firm Brand Fusion, who hired local data collectors to go around Bangladesh over a six month period this year and find bank, micro-finance and post office branches as well as savings and cooperatives and mobile money agents, he said.
A Digital Map of Financial Services in Bangladesh was launched Saturday as the first of its kind in the country.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman was the chief guest at the launching ceremony at the BB Training Academy in the city.
The BB, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) jointly organised the launching ceremony, which was also attended, among others, by Hassan Zaman, chief economist of the BB, and Gregory Chen of the foundation.
Dr Rahman said that using the geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to assess the spatial distribution of bank branches, ATMs, agents and other financial access points, we can generate analysis that can be of great operational value to the commercial sector, the public sector, and for guiding regulatory policy.
The practical tool is essential to generate, disseminate and use knowledge, he said and elaborated how the digital map can practically benefit in different sectors and ways.
It is critical that the new financial mapping tool is used by both BB and MRA in making balanced and sound policy and regulatory decisions such as giving permission of balanced bank branches, ATM, agent and other point of service in certain geographical areas of the country for promoting financial inclusion or SME and agriculture credit to the underserved areas.
The map can also help generate very high-resolution of where poor people live and assess the most effective method of their financial access, safety net programs and money-transfer to the poor; it can also help in liquidity management, he said.
There are many initiatives relating to the concept of a digital Bangladesh Bank which have taken in the last few years. The initiatives include e-commerce such as modernisation of the payments system and financial sector IT infrastructure such as online clearing and settlement of interbank paper based and electronic fund transfers, online credit information bureau, the National Payments Switch (NPS), he said.
These can complement our new Integrated Supervision System, which is our new electronic portal which allows us to monitor many aspects of the financial sector both at the aggregate macro level as well as zoom into branch level data, he said.
The governor, however, laid stress on updating the digital map regularly and sought cooperation all concerned in this connection.
Mr Zaman said that the digital map can be accessed by anyone with access to the internet, and the users will be able to look both at national patterns but also zoom into a specific part of the country. It can be used by regulators, financial providers as well as consumers.
The digital map project was sponsored by the Gates Foundation and facilitated by BB and MRA and implemented by a specialist firm Brand Fusion, who hired local data collectors to go around Bangladesh over a six month period this year and find bank, micro-finance and post office branches as well as savings and cooperatives and mobile money agents, he said.
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