Dr. Atiur Rahman
Governor, Bangladesh Bank :
Our avowed national aspiration of joining the community of advanced economies by early years of the decade of forties will entail a faster than ever before pace in opening up and integration of our trade and investment linkages with the global economy. This in turn will entail matching rapidity in further opening up and integration of our domestic banking and financial markets with the global financial markets, anchored securely in institutional soundness and capability of attracting from the global savings pools new investment resources in the massive volumes needed in meeting our growth and development aspirations.
Increasing openness and integration with the global economy will necessarily bring in tow increasing vulnerability of our domestic financial institutions and markets to risks from destabilizing swings in the global markets. Equipping our financial sector’s current and future human resource pools with state of the art knowledge and capabilities in managing the diverse range of risks; and instilling in them a socially responsible inquisitive, innovative mindset in addressing the inclusivity and environmental sustainability imperatives of the new 2030 global SDGs unanimously adopted in the UNGA in September 2015, are in my view two overriding priority areas for our academic community to play key role in.
These priorities in course programs on banking and finance would be best served not by treating individual subjects in separate silos but instead in cross-cutting holistic approaches highlighting interconnectedness of the various subjects, with reference to the overarching global best practices in corporate governance, accounting and auditing, capital adequacy, liquidity, leverage and disclosure comprehensiveness in financial and sustainability reporting. Emerging trends in new priority areas of financing infrastructure projects, green and social impact investments, inclusive financing of productive MSME initiatives and so forth need adequate coverage in the course contents. I trust the course curriculum for the new MPB program has been designed with due attention to these priorities, but would nevertheless suggest frequent revisiting of the curriculum, flexibly accommodating to any perceived adjustment need.
Equipping our financial sector’s current and future manpower pool with state of the art knowledge base in traditional areas of safeguarding institutional soundness and stability, and at the same time instilling in them an innovative mindset anchored in an ethos of socially responsible inclusive, environmentally sustainable financing will be just as exciting and stimulating a journey of discovery for our academic community as it has been for Bangladesh Bank (BB) in its steadfast countrywide promotion of socially responsible inclusive green financing. BB’s track record demonstrating successful use of socially responsible financing as a stability enhancement tool has attracted widespread attention and recognition in the global community, so would pioneering initiatives of mainstreaming these new financing approaches in core course curriculums in centers of tertiary education and research in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
