President signs Grameen Bank bill

A media release of the Parliament Secretariat said Abdul Hamid put pen to paper on Sunday.

Parliament on Tuesday passed the bill amid objections from the bank’s founding and immediate past Managing Director Muhammad Yunus and the BNP.

Following the passage of the bill, Yunus said: “An institution of immense pride has been pushed towards destruction through this (bill).”

The BNP said the government’s move aimed to destroy the bank.

The present government took initiative to amend and scrap ordinances promulgated during the military rule. The Grameen Bank Ordinance of 1983 is one of them.

Under the Ordinance, Grameen Bank was obligated to submit a financial report every year only to the government. Now it will have to submit another to the central bank. The new law stipulates that the bank's Board of Directors will have 12 members - three chosen by the government and nine chosen by the stakeholders. The MD will head the Board of Directors, but he will not have any voting right. It provides for increasing the bank’s authorised capital to Tk 10 billion from Tk 3.5 billion and paid-up capital to Tk 3 billion from Tk 500 million. The government will hold 25 percent and other shareholders the remaining 75 percent of the bank’s shares. Yunus had been the MD of Grameen Bank since its inception in 1983, until the government removed him from the position in March 2011. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 with Grameen Bank "for their efforts in poverty alleviation" through microcredit. The media release said the President also signed Neuro-Developmental Disabled Protection Trust Bill, Payra Port Authority Bill, Geographical Direction Product (Registration and Protection) Bill, Asian Reinsurance Corporation Bill, Rural Electrification Board Bill and Election Commission Secretariat (Amendment) Bill.