ZCZC
BSS-53
BIBM-ETHICS-LECTURE
Nurul Matin memorial lecture held at BIBM
DHAKA, Feb 2, 2020 (BSS) – The nineteenth ‘Nurul Matin Memorial Lecture on Ethics in Banking’ was held today in the Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) auditorium.
Chairman of BIBM Governing Board and Governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Fazle Kabir presided over the session while Dhaka University Bangabandhu Chair Professor and former BB Governor Dr Atiur Rahman delivered a keynote speech in this program, said a press release.
BIBM Director General Dr Md Akhtaruzzaman delivered the welcome speech while Professor and Director (Research, Development and Consultancy) of BIBM Dr Prashanta Kumar Banerjee gave vote of thanks of the program.
Fazle Kabir said financial inclusion has received policy priority to Bangladesh Bank to build strong foundation of financial infrastructure, reduce the economic vulnerability of households, alleviate poverty and improve the quality of peoples’ lives and hence promoting economic growth. As part of financial inclusion initiatives, he said, BB has instructed banks to extend formal banking services to less privileged people in both urban and rural areas.
“Measures undertaken in this respect like agent and booth banking, mobile banking and school banking, opening No Frill Accounts (NFAs), doing banking for working street children and arranging fairs and creating refinancing schemes have brought a massive unbanked people under banking services. In all these efforts your dedications have been stamped proudly,” he added.
In his keynote speech, Atiur Rahman said poverty is receding fast, and a number of sustainable development goals are destined to be achieved well ahead of 2030 as was the case with achievement of most of the millennium development goals (MDGs).
Bangladesh is now ahead of its higher-income large neighbors on many counts of human and social development indicators, including life expectancy, he added.
He said ethics in banking or for that matter wider canvas of finance is, therefore, a subset of general ethics. “Ethics cannot flourish in vacuum. It has to relate to values and moral principles used in communities in which a company or enterprise or bank operates,” he added.
Members of board of directors of Bangladesh Bank, former governors, deputy governors, senior central bankers, government high officials, BIBM’s chair and supernumerary professors, top executives from different banks, university professors, academicians, faculty members of BIBM, senior bank executives, media representatives, officers of BIBM participated in the nineteenth Nurul Matin Memorial Lecture program.
BSS/PR/KUC/MMA/2041hrs