NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, February 16, 2015

With the tenure of the nine elected female board members having expired today, Nobel winning micro-credit organisation Grameen Bank will now be run by government-appointed board members.

However, the female representative directors, who have opposed the Grameen Bank Act 2013 from the start, said they would continue to attend the board meetings even if they are not invited, until a new full-fleged board is elected and made functional.

Sources said a four-member quorum for the board has already been created, and it will run the bank under the amended act. An internal election commission will hold fresh elections to elect nine new female board members within a year.

M Aslam Alam, secretary of the Bank and Financial Institutions Division, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday they are still looking for a retired district judge to be appointed as the election commissioner to conduct the election of new members.

Banking Division sources said Finance Minister AMA Muhith has personally contacted several retired district judges, but none were interested in becoming commissioner in order to conduct the election.

The three people appointed by the government to run Grameen Bank (GB) are Khondaker Muzammel Huq, chairman of the GB board of directors, Suraiya Begum, secretary of the Statistics and Informatics Division, and Shah Alam Sarwar, managing director of IFIC Bank Ltd.