‘No liquidity crisis at Prime Bank’

FT ONLINE

Managing Director of Prime Bank Rahel Ahmed posited that there is no liquidity crisis at the bank, during an event on Monday.

He was speaking at a meet the press program held at Dhaka Club to mark the bank’s 23rd anniversary.

He said: “The central bank prescribed in January to maintain advance-deposit ratio up to 83.5%. Our ADR was already below 83.5%. Now our AD ratio is around 82%. Hence there is no liquidity crisis in our bank, and this is because our balance sheet management is very efficient.

“The deposit interest rate of the Prime Bank has not reached a double digit figure. It is now below 8%.”

He also said the bank’s key focus for the next three to four years will be in SME banking and consumer banking, and it has set a strategic road map in this regard targeting 2021.

Rahel Ahmed said that the bank is now lending around 22% of its credit to SME and consumer banking. This would be increased to 40% by 2021.

“In the last three years, there have been many changes in the bank. The management has changed. In the last three years, we have also made some structural changes. We have been remodeling the branches. We used to have branch-based banking, and now it has become centralized; and in there we have introduced wholesale banking model and relationship management model in our corporate banking,” said the Prime Bank CEO.

Rahel Ahmed also said that the non-performing loan of the bank was around 8% before 2015, but in the last years the bank came up with a new approach and all the loan portfolios after 2015 have been absolutely perfect.

“The classified loans of the Prime Bank is now 5% plus, but we will bring it down below 3% within next three years.”

The program was also attended by the bank’s Additional Managing Director Habibur Rahman, and Deputy Managing Director Mohammad Habibur Rahman Chowdhury, among others.

Prime Bank is going to observe its 23rd anniversary today. As of December 31, 2016, the bank’s deposits stood at around Tk19,793 crore, and it disbursed credit of around Tk17,021 crore.