Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank, is organizing 'Banking Fair Bangladesh 2015' for the first time aiming to boost the ongoing financial inclusion initiatives from November 24-28.
The theme of the Fair is 'To Build a Banking Nation' with the objectives of raising public awareness about banking products and services, and expanding financial literacy programs at the national level.
BB Governor Dr. Atiur Rahman is expected to open the Fair at Bangla Academy in the capital Dhaka on November 24 to cover a wide array of events, including financial literacy campaign targeting vulnerable population groups, school children, and working children, seminars and debates on contemporary economic and banking issues.
The central bank of Bangladesh is organizing the Fair in cooperation with all banks, non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) and mobile financial service providers to offer excellent opportunities for all, including the potential banking customers, students, and the working people of the society to learn about available banking products and services in a single platform.
All participating institutions, including the BB will have stalls to showcase their products and services. The Fair will also be a great attraction for the job-seekers, the organizers said.
The five-day long Fair will be opened for general people from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm.
Every day from 10.00 am to 1.00 pm, under the financial literacy program of the BB, programs will be arranged including the following target groups include school going students, vulnerable adults, child laborers and open participants.
Besides, each day from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm, debate competition will be arranged on banking and economic topics with participation of university level students.
Probable topics of the competition are interest rate determination control should remain fully, only to the central bank? Default culture is the principal cause of high interest rate in the banking sector, currency exchange rate should totally be market based, for sake of economic development, flows of fund should be completely free, foreign investment is not increasing as expected because of the inadequate liberalization, ‘inflation targeting' is not desirable for our economy, role of capital market is more important than that of the banking sector for economic development and fixing working time of banks will cut off bank's profit.
Seminar, Workshop and Roundtable Meeting on banking and financial topics will be arranged in participation of the financial sector experts from 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm each day.
Probable discussion topics of the meeting are financial inclusion and economic development: role of the central bank, financial literacy: Pre-requisite of massive financial inclusion, flow of funds in the productive sectors and economic growth and inflation and economic growth: Is there any growth supportive inflation rate?
Other issues include the most desirable interest rate structure for Bangladesh, developmental central banking: Committed to fulfilling social and environmental responsibilities, role of banking sector in economic development, role credit flows into agriculture, small and medium enterprise sectors in employment creation and economic development, effectiveness of Monetary Policy: challenges of declaring monetary policy in a rising economy and technology based banking services: introduction of a digital era/ role of Bangladesh Bank in implementing Vision 2021 are scheduled to be discussed.
From 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm, cultural program-folk songs and drama on banking products and services will be presented.
The organizers also said along with high officials of the BB, ministers and state ministers of different ministries prominent economists and high officials of the government, and other regulatory organizations of the financial sector, researchers in economics field, university teachers, senior bankers, business leaders will be present at the program as discussants and guests.
BBN/SSR/AD