Dhaka Bank to strengthen presence in pharma, leather, agri sectors

Dhaka Bank Ltd will be a marquee name in near future among the country's financial institutions riding on its growing brand image.
"We expect Dhaka Bank to be the top financial institution of the country with a substantial global footprint in the coming days. Moreover, we enjoy the name "Dhaka Bank" as a widely recognizable brand all over the country and most importantly we dream to grow further with the ultimate satisfaction of  our customers," Emranul Huq, additional managing director (AMD) of Dhaka Bank Ltd told The FE in an interview recently.
He said Dhaka Bank has always been contributing to CSR and would like to widen the avenues to perform these responsibilities to a greater extent so that  the bank can contribute more to the society  while doing the core businesses.
Replying to a question on the thrust business areas of Dhaka Bank, the AMD said the bank has its presence in almost every contributing business sectors of the country. Among them, textile and RMG sector is prioritised.
"Besides, we have huge exposure in financing various infrastructural projects, power sector, chemical and engineering sectors. Now we are planning to increase our presence in pharma sector, leather and leather goods and agri sector," the AMD said.
"Dhaka Bank believes in sustainable business growth and therefore aggressive banking is not our forte," he said.
"The bank achieved 11 per cent growth in deposit volume in the year 2016 over the previous year, whereas at the same time advance growth of 14 per cent was achieved, which is quite satisfactory but still there are scope to develop and we are working on this," Emranul Huq said.
The Bank achieved the necessary capital adequacy ratio set by the Bangladesh Bank and hopes to be able to comply with the Basel III regime that the Bangladesh Bank is intending to implement by 2019.
 To deal with various risk factors, the Bank has an independent Risk Management Division under the supervision of the Risk Management Committee of the Board as per the regulatory requirement.
"If you can manage all these things together, profitability will be the most certain outcome. We are also doing well in making profits and that is reflected in 54 per cent growth in 2016 over the previous year," the career banker said.
Commenting on the idle money deposited with the banks, the Dhaka Bank AMD said: You can go for lending abruptly as you have billions of idle money in your pocket and there are always thousands of fund seekers. But you need to decide what to do at that point of time. I think steady and stable way of investing is the key, for this you might need to sit back for a while with your idle money.
"Besides, alternative avenues of utilising the money should be identified and capitalised. Diversification in the portfolio is also needed. We can invest wherever we want, whichever new projects are placed before us. But we need to go for diversification strictly on merit basis. Forced diversification can't yield positive results always".
On IT, he said Dhaka Bank is already in the process of upgrading real time online banking system.
"We are hopeful that with the migration to the better version of the banking system, we will be able to serve our customers with even more satisfaction. We have our own ATM and CDM network for enabling our customers doing their transactions without coming to the branch".
"Internet Banking is also there for our customers with various added features and we are going to introducing our very own mobile application in order to offer more and more ease in banking along with the excellence in the first place."
Recently, Dhaka Bank launched "C Solution", a fully automated system for the customers to assist in their cash management activities.
Emranul Huq, a career banker with three decades of professional banking experience both at home and abroad, started his career with Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI) in Dhaka as Management Trainee in 1986. Before joining Dhaka Bank in 1998, he also worked at Eastern Bank Limited and Credit Africa Bank Limited in Zambia in various capacities.
    raihanmchowdhury@gmail.com