Trust Bank (Bangladesh) to offer farm, SME loans at 10pc

Trust Bank Limited, the country’s only army-owned bank, will provide loans for the agricultural sector and small-and-medium enterprises at a rate of ten per cent interest per annum, an official of the bank said Wednesday.
Iqbal U Ahmed, managing director of Trust Bank, was speaking after signing an agreement between the bank and financial services and communications company Western Union that aims to speed the process of remitting money to the country.
‘We have decided to disburse loans in the agricultural and SME sectors at ten per cent interest in response to a call from the Bangladesh Bank,’ Ahmed said at the Westin Hotel.
‘We will also give loans to women entrepreneurs at a nine per cent interest rate,’ said Ahmed.
He said the loans would be distributed from 40 branches of the Trust Bank was well as five special SME centres under the bank.
Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman, the chief guest at the programme, thanked Trust Bank for their initiative and called on the government and private banks to provide loans at the same rate.
‘Seventy-per cent of our freedom fighters were farmers. So we should do something for farmers and the agricultural sector as a whole in return for their sacrifices,’ said Rahman.
He said although corporate tax in the financial sector had been cut in the last budget, banks were still not reducing their lending rates.
‘This is despite the banks saying they would reduce the lending rate if corporate tax was reduced,’ said Rahman.
The central bank chief said the agricultural sector and remittances from expatriate workers were two of the largest contributors to the economy, adding that Bangladesh had remained relatively unscathed from the global downturn as a result of their input.
‘Although most other countries have suffered from the recession; bumper agricultural production and increasing remittance inflows have mainly guarded our economy from the worst affects of the recession,’ said Rahman.
He said Bangladesh could be a model country in the way it had faced the impact of the recession.
‘Seventy-per cent of migrant workers in the middle-east send remittances back to the country; they also send dollars to the country. They are the real patriots, and most of them are the sons of farmers,’ he said.
S: New Age