23-11-2020

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23 2020 10
Khulna Zone of Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd organized a webinar titled 'Compliance of Shari`ah in
Banking Sector' recently. Major General (Rtd.) Engr. Abdul Matin, Chairman, Risk Management
Committee of the bank addressed the program as chief guest. Md. Mahbub ul Alam, Managing
Director & CEO of the bank addressed the program as special guest. Professor Dr. Mohammad Gias
Uddin Talukder, Chairman of IBBL Shari`ah Supervisory Committee addressed the webinar as chief
discussant. Presided over by Md. Abdus Salam, Head of Khulna Zone, Md. Shamsul Huda, Executive
Vice President of the bank addressed the program. Head of branches, executives and officials under
Khulna Zone attended the webinar.
Photo: Courtesy
BB gets two
new deputy
governors
The government has
appointed two new deputy
governors to Bangladesh
Bank (BB), filling the
positions that remained
vacant since 2016, reports
BSS.
BB Executive Director
Kazi Sayedur Rahman and
Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan
Bank's Managing Director
AKM Sajedur Rahman Khan
will take up the posts, as per
a Finance Ministry gazette
notification issued today.
The appointments will
remain valid until they reach
the age of 62.
Prior to the new
appointments, the central
bank had two deputy
governors:
SM
Moniruzzaman and Ahmed
Jamal. Moniruzzaman's
contract will end in
December. The latest
appointments bring the
number of deputy governors
to four.
Britain, Canada rollover
EU trade terms for
Brexit deal
LONDON : Britain and Canada agreed
Saturday to continue trading together under
existing EU terms when the current Brexit
transition period ends shortly, the UK
government said, reports BSS.
The Department of International Trade said
the deal "locked in" the two countries' existing
o20 billion ($26 billion, EUR22 billion) trading
relationship and set the stage for further
negotiations.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his
Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau agreed in
the Saturday video call to rollover current EU-
Canada trading arrangements and begin
negotiations on a new, UK-Canada trade deal in
2021. Johnson said in a statement the "fantastic
agreement" ensured trade with one of Britain's
closest allies would go "from strength to
strength".
"Our negotiators have been working flat out to
secure trade deals for the UK, and from as early
next year we have agreed to start work on a new,
bespoke trade deal with Canada that will go even
further in meeting the needs of our economy," he
added.
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss said
the agreement created "certainty for thousands
of jobs".
"The UK is bonded by history, culture and
transatlantic trade with our friends and allies in
Canada," she said.
The UK has said the agreement with Canada
will avoid o42 million in tariffs on British
exports.
Last week, Trudeau said Ottawa and London
should be able to agree an "easy" trade deal by
the end of the year but added that Britain's
"bandwidth" for negotiations was a challenge as
it holds talks with several major trade partners at
the same time.
Britain is currently locked in fraught talks with
the European Union to set the terms of their
future trading relationship for when the post-
Brexit transition period ends on December 31.
Following its referendum vote in 2016 to leave
the EU, Britain can now strike trade deals of its
own. London is in a rush to secure as many as
possible to mitigate any economic hit caused by
more restrictive economic relations with the
European bloc, which is by far its biggest market.
Spanish banks seek
mergers as outlook
darkens
BARCELONA: A wave of
mergers is sweeping across the
Spanish banking sector as
lenders face up to a pandemicinduced
recession, ultralow
interest rates and growing
competition from financial
technology startups, reports
BSS.
CaixaBank, Spain's thirdlargest
bank, and Bankia, its
fourth-largest, approved a
merger in September which
will create the nation's biggest
domestic lender with around
664 billion euros ($788
billion) in assets in the country.
And BBVA, the country's
second-largest bank,
announced Monday it was in
talks with Banco Sabadell,
Spain's fifth-largest bank, over
a possible tie-up.
If successful, it would create
Spain's second-largest
domestic bank, far ahead of
Santander, which would still
remain the country's biggest
bank by total assets due to its
huge international presence.
Mid-sized lenders Liberbank
and Unicaja, meanwhile,
confirmed renewed merger
talks in October.
The trend is not new in
Spain, which saw dozens of
lenders disappear in a wave of
tie-ups that followed the 2008
financial crisis, when Madrid
received a European Union
bailout of 41.3 billion euros for
its ailing banking sector.
These new operations are
"defensive to avoid problems
in the future," Xavier Vives, of
the IESE Business School in
Barcelona, told AFP.
But unlike during the
previous crisis, when lenders
faced a solvency problem, this
time around the issue is a lack
of profitability, he added.
"Interest rates are low, the
yield curve is very flat, and with
the Covid pandemic, revisions
of interest rates have been
postponed. Under these
circumstances, the banking
business is not very profitable,"
said Vives.
At the same time, banks are
facing fierce competition from
financial technology startups,
or the so-called "fintech"
sector, which operate online
and have much lower
operating costs than
traditional banks.
"Certainly, with negative
interest rates it is very difficult
to earn money," said Ricardo
Zion, a bank expert with the
EAE Business School.
"But the big problem for
banks is that it is impossible to
be profitable with a model
based on having branches,
especially to compete with the
'fintech' and new operators."
"It's like the airlines. A
traditional airline has its own
fleet and pilots who earn
400,000 euros a year, and it
must compete with a low-cost
airline that uses rented planes
and pilots who earn 60,000
euros."
At a time when banks are
boosting their provisions to
face an expected rise on bad
loans due to the economic
fallout of the pandemic, these
merger operations "strengthen
their solvency," Zion said.
"Unlike during the last crisis,
when banks were a problem,
now they must be part of the
solution," he added.
This banking consolidation,
which will lead to the closure of
branches and job cuts, has
raised alarm bells at unions.
"I am worried about the
magnitude of job losses which
can occur," Pepe Alvarez,
leader of the UGT union,
Spain's second-largest, said
during an interview with
Spanish public radio.
"Financial institutions must
be aware of the effort made by
this country to keep them
afloat during the last crisis and
they can't return the favour
with more dismissals," he
added.
Between 2008 and the end
of 2019, Spanish banks
slashed nearly 100,000 jobs,
or around 37 percent of their
workforce in 2008, according
to the CCOO, Spain's largest
union.
Nigeria's economy
slips into recession:
statistics office
ABUJA : Oil-rich Nigeria,
Africa's biggest economy,
slipped into recession for the
second time in four years, hit
by both the coronavirus
pandemic and falling oil
prices, official figures revealed
Saturday, reports BSS.
The third-quarter 2020 real
GDP shrank for a second
consecutive quarter by 3.62
percent, said the National
Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
said Saturday.
"Cumulative GDP for the
first 9 months of 2020
therefore stood at -2.48
percent," it added.
The agency blamed falling
oil prices and the effects of the
coronavirus epidemic.
GDP related to oil shrank by
13.89 percent, compared to
6.63 in the second quarter,
said the third-quarter report.
Non-oil GDP shrank 2.51
percent over the same period,
compared to 6.05 percent in
the second quarter.
Already in the second
quarter, Nigeria's economy
contracted by six percent.
Nigeria's economy was last
in recession in 2016, its first in
more than two decades. While
it emerged in 2017, growth
since then has been sluggish.
The International Monetary
Fund has forecast a 5.4-
percent drop in Nigeria's GDP
this year. The government has
said the economy may shrink
by as much as 8.9 percent.
Nigeria is Africa's top oil
producer, normally
accounting for an average
output of two million barrels
per day. But the effects of the
Covid-19 pandemic and low
oil prices have cut production
to around 1.4 million barrels.
Social Islami Bank Ltd celebrates its 25th Anniversary at the Head Office of the Bank by cutting a
cake recently. Professor Md. Anwarul Azim Arif, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank and
former Vice Chancellor of University of Chittagong, was present in the program as the chief guest.
Managing Director and CEO Quazi Osman Ali presided over the program. Abu Naser Chowdhury,
Md. Sirajul Hoque and Md. Shamsul Hoque, Deputy Managing Directors, Abdul Hannan Khan,
Company Secretary and other senior executives were present in the program. All the divisional
Heads and Branch Managers attended the program through virtual platform. Photo: Courtesy
Mercantile Bank Ltd organized a virtual workshop on Compliance of Internal Audit recently. A total
number of sixty officials from various branches attended the online program. Md. Quamrul Islam
Chowdhury, Managing Director & CEO of the bank inaugurated the virtual workshop. In his address
Md. Quamrul Islam Chowdhury advised the participants to strictly adhere with the audit guidelines
and safe guard bank's interest. Md. Zakir Hossain, DMD and COO of the bank was panel speaker at
the virtual workshop. Javed Tariq, Principal of MBTI moderated the the program. Photo: Courtesy
Rupee slips 13 paise
to 74.32 against US
dollar in early trade
MUMBAI : The rupee
depreciated 13 paise to 74.32
against the US dollar in
opening trade on Thursday
tracking muted domestic
equities and strong
American currency, reports
BSS.
At the interbank forex
market, the domestic unit
opened at 74.28 against the
US dollar, then gained
ground and touched 74.23
against the American
currency. In volatile trade,
the local unit also touched
74.32 against the greenback,
down 13 paise over its
previous close.
On Wednesday, rupee had
settled at 74.19 against the
US dollar.
American pharmaceutical
giant Pfizer and its German
partner BioNTech said they
have concluded phase 3
study of their mRNA-based
COVID-19 vaccine candidate
BNT162b2, meeting all
primary efficacy end points.
Notwithstanding the
positive news, the rupee was
trading in a narrow range
"as rise in COVID-19 cases in
Europe and the US offset
positive sentiments
surrounding the potential
vaccine," Reliance Securities
said in a research note.
Further, the US dollar
rebounded this morning in
Asian trade and could cap
gains, the note added.
Meanwhile, the dollar
index, which gauges the
greenback's strength against
a basket of six currencies,
rose 0.16 per cent to 92.46.
On the domestic equity
market front, the 30-share
BSE benchmark Sensex was
trading 11.80 points lower at
44,168.25, while the broader
NSE Nifty rose 4.30 points
to 12,942.55.
Foreign
institutional
investors were net buyers in
the capital market as they
purchased shares worth Rs
3,071.93 crore on a net basis
on Wednesday, according to
provisional exchange data.
Brent crude futures, the
global oil benchmark, fell
0.52 per cent to USD 44.11
per barrel.
Xi touts China's
'openness' on trade
in APEC address
KUALA LUMPUR: President Xi Jinping pegged China as
the pivot point for global free trade on Thursday, vowing to
keep his huge economy open and warning against
protectionism, reports BSS.
Buoyed by the signing of the world's largest trade pact over
the weekend, Xi said the Asia-Pacific is the "forerunner
driving global growth" in a world hit by "multiple challenges"
including the pandemic.
He vowed "openness" to trade and refuted any possibility
of the "decoupling" of the world's second largest economy -
in his only comments nodding to the hostile trade policy of
Donald Trump's US administration, which has battered
China with tariffs and tech restrictions.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum,
held online this year because of the coronavirus pandemic,
brings together 21 Pacific Rim countries including the
world's two biggest economies, accounting for about 60
percent of global GDP.
Trump, wounded by his election loss to Joe Biden, did not
take part in the summit or send a high level delegate in his
place.
In a speech that veered into triumphalism over China's
economic "resilience and vitality" in coming back from the
virus, which started in the central city of Wuhan, Xi warned
countries who insist on trade barriers that "seclusion" will
hold growth back.
Indonesia cuts
rates to bolster
recession-hit
economy
JAKARTA : Indonesia's
central bank slashed interest
rates again Thursday after the
Covid-19 pandemic pushed
Southeast Asia's biggest
economy into its first
recession in more than 20
years, reports BSS.
Bank Indonesia cut the key
lending rate by 25 basis points
to 3.75 percent, its fifth rate
reduction this year, as the
global health crisis slams the
brakes on growth.
The move comes two weeks
after Indonesia posted its
second consecutive quarter of
negative growth - the
country's first recession since
the 1998-99 Asian financial
crisis.
"This is a follow-up step to
accelerate the national
economy's recovery," central
bank governor Perry Warjiyo
said.
The government has
unveiled more than $48
billion in stimulus to help
offset the impact of the virus,
which forced large-scale
restrictions that hammered
growth.
Several million Indonesians
have been laid off or
furloughed as the vast
country, home to nearly 270
million people, has battled to
contain the crisis.
Covid-19 infections have
topped 480,000 with more
than 15,000 deaths, putting
Indonesia among the worsthit
Asian countries.
However, the true scale of
the crisis is widely believed to
be much bigger in Indonesia,
which has one of the world's
lowest testing rates.