Nearly 20 million underprivileged people in the country are now enjoying financial inclusion with bank accounts in their names.
This large number of people, including extreme poor, marginal persons, street children and beggars, didn’t have access to banking services ten years ago. Now the underprivileged can open a bank account with only Tk 10 allowing them to enjoy necessary banking services.
According to a recent report of Bangladesh Bank, 18.85 million are actively doing transactions in their account while 10 million are making transactions using mobile and agent banking services.
Among them over 2.5 million are extremely poor, nearly 5,000 marginal and street children and over 9.9 million are farmers, the September 2018 report says.
Other than the government’s initiatives, the central bank’s ‘Financial Inclusion’ program played a big role to bring the underprivileged sections of the society under banking services.
Former Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman told Bangla Tribune, “The underprivileged people are no different than us, they are also human. During my time as the governor, we undertook the endeavour to introduce saving habit among these people so that they get to ensure their own financial support. So we started the Financial Inclusion program.
Today, this financial inclusion is playing the role of a catalyst for Bangladesh towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),” Rahman added.
Eight state-owned banks, Sonali, Agrani, Janata, Rupali, Bangladesh Development Bank, Basic Bank, Krishi Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank, have been working to bring the underprivileged under Banking Services.
The underprivileged people get to open accounts with a minimum deposit of Tk 10, Tk 50 and Tk 100. This service took off from 2010. A refinancing fund of Tk 20 million was created aiming to keep these accounts active. The account holders can take the loan with only 9 percent interest from this fund with no other charges or fees applicable.