Business Desk :
The Padma Bank, formerly known as Farmers Bank, now wants to merge with a state-owned bank – within just three years of revival from a failed institution because of massive irregularities and corruption.
The bank’s managing director submitted a merger proposal to the finance ministry on 8 July, sources said.
They proposed a merger with any of the five banks – Sonali Bank, Janata Bank, Agrani Bank, Rupali Bank and BDBL.
The Farmers Bank became a hotbed of lending anomalies in less than a year after its formal inception in 2013, making general depositors the sufferers.
More than Tk3,500 crore was siphoned out from the bank, according to the Bangladesh Bank.
Against the backdrop of loan scams and other financial irregularities, Sonali Bank, Agrani Bank, Janata Bank, Rupali Bank and ICB Bank bought most of the shares of Farmers Bank in 2018 in a government intervention to salvage it from drowning.
The name of the bank was changed to Padma Bank in January next year in an effort to recover its image.
Earlier in December 2019, former Finance Minister AMA Muhith said that giving a new lifeline to Farmers Bank was not a right decision.
The veteran minister then said he had to act on Farmers Bank because of political pressure.
“The bank was set up by Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, and he left it in good time. But (by that time) whatever had happened had happened. The bank was subjected to looting. It was finished,” said Muhith.
“There is no need to rename it Padma Bank – instead it should be merged with another bank,” the former minister said in 2019.
