Business Desk :
The Bangladesh Bank issued a gazette notification in this regard on Thursday, saying Citizens Bank is a scheduled bank as of Tuesday.
Earlier on 7 December, the bank received its licence from the central bank as the country’s 61st commercial bank.
Law Minister Anisul Huq is a shareholder of the newly launched bank and the minister’s mother Jahanara Huq applied for the bank licence.
After her sudden death, permission to change shareholding or ownership to Anisul Huq was sought from the central bank. The approval was given at a meeting of the board of directors of the central bank on 26 October last year.
However, the new bank is launching at a time when several banks that started up in the past few years have not been able to offer services outside Dhaka city.
“Considering the country’s economy and type of businesses, it will be difficult for a new bank to survive without innovation,” former governor of Bangladesh Bank, Dr Saleh Uddin Ahmed, told The Business Standard.
He said 80% of people in the country still do not have banking services. A bank can be successful if it can bring them under service, put more emphasis on the SME sector, and introduce a new type of business model to offer services at the upazila and village level without focusing on the city.
