Sonali set to cease monopoly on govt fee, bill collection

Sonali Bank's exclusive right to collect various government fees and bills and have access to the latter's account with the central bank, is likely to be over soon.
Officials said the ministries concerned are working to engage other banks, too, in this treasury task to infuse speed in it.
Involvement of other banks is seen imperative as the transaction system of Sonali Bank (SB) gets jammed with workload.
Law ministry recently sought approval of finance division for devolution of the authority on collection of land-registration fee and taxes to all commercial banks having online service instead of collecting those only through Sonali Bank's pay-order, they added.
The move follows finance minister AMA Muhith's raising question about Sonali Bank's sole agency in fee and bill collection for government.
His attention was drawn to this matter through a letter sent by the inspector-general of registration.
The minister in a letter to finance and law secretaries posed the question why only Sonali Bank alone should do government transactions.  He asked the secretaries to 'change the mindset' and engage other commercial banks, too, in this task.
Sources said the inspector-general of registration in his letter to the minister wrote that the land-registration fee and other revenues are now being collected through pay-order from Sonali Bank. Since the fees are collected manually, tallying the amounts of sub-district,-district,-and divisional-level revenues from the sector takes a significant time that causes delay in taking important decision using the statistics. Besides, he wrote, checking the genuineness of pay-order is time-consuming. And, thus, no service can be given instantly.
According to him, steps have been taken to collect the land-registration fees and other revenues by experienced service providers in several commercial banks through using uniform software.
Due to digitisation, the statistics will be immediately available online and the authenticity of the revenue receipts can be checked instantly. "It will help expedite providing services to people."
Contacted, a senior Sonali Bank official told the FE that, apart from providing treasury service on behalf of the central bank, the country's largest bank also performs a specialised banking job: government transactions.
He said out of 1,205 local branches, 596 branches of the bank receive government chalan and 480 make payment of all kinds of government cheques and bills. According to 2014 annual report transaction involving the government with the bank was Tk 1.18 trillion.
The official said Sonali also makes pension payment among retired army, navy, air forces, civil persons and other non-government personnel. It also sells savings certificate, collects land-registration fees, and water, gas and electricity bills.
He said the annual spending of the bank for providing special services to government is Tk 2.0 billion and it employs a significant number of manpower. Against the job the Sonali Bank only gets reimbursement of the cost.
For carrying out the special tasks, the bank gets no benefit, says the annual report.
Asked whether the bank is incompetent to provide services immediately and lacks digitisation, the official said the state-owned Sonali Bank has the largest network compared to other banks in the country.
 "Presently," he said, "chalans can be verified a day after the depositing in 142 nominated branches. And from October all the 596 nominated branches will be able to provide the same facility."
The bank is also installing a gateway to provide instant online services in many arenas, he added.
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