Foreword for the Fourth Edition

The slow recovery of the global economy from the impact of the COVD-19 pandemic last year was abruptly disrupted by the conflict surrounding the Ukraine crisis at the beginning of the current year. Countries across the globe including Bangladesh have been seriously affected as their economies experienced new setbacks due to a rise in commodity prices, soaring energy bills and depreciating national currencies relative to US dollars. Current account deficits and depleting foreign exchange reserve have created new volatility and uncertainties and the prospect of looming recessions in many countries have become a source of worries all around. Under such challenging ground reality efforts are being made to address the challenges faced in different degrees by different countries individually and internationally. The state of the health of financial institutions and the ways they can be best utilized for crisis management are being specially considered at this moment of unprecedented challenges .The need for adequate data and information on financial institutions and careful analysis on them are of considerable importance. The financial institutions, their policies and functions are to be effectively leveraged for crisis management besides their other economic roles. The work on the Almanac on Bangladesh Banks and financial institutions for the year 2020 and 2021 was specially planned and completed to be available timely to meet this purposes.

The Almanac for the year 2020 and 2021 retains all the sections of the previous editions and a new section has been added on the Bangladesh Central Bank or Bangladesh Bank related information. New additions to the content of the Almanac also includes detailed information on policies, guidelines and orders on the governments monetary policy and regulatory stances on a wide range of financial institution operation related matters and credit and exchange rate policies. These details are addition to what earlier editions as well as the present edition has the organizational details of banks and financial institutions, capital structure, loan disbursement, products offered to clients, spatial distribution of facilities offered and CSR activities of the banks and financial institutions. The dedicated members of a team who collected the data for the present edition of the Almanac deserves our special thanks for the challenging task they have accomplished and the methodical manner in which they have collected, compiled and formatted them. We also owe our thanks to the Bangladesh Bank for its encouragement and financial support which made our work on the Almanac achievable. The banks and financial institutions themselves were also most forthcoming in their support and help without which we would not have been able to complete our work on time. A special from us go to them for their help.

I am fortunate to have an editorial board members of which are all distinguished experts in their own areas of competence. Their cooperation, advice and constructive inputs have as always greatly enriched quality of the present almanac. I do extend to them my most sincere thanks. I also thank Mr. Abdar Rahman of ShikkhaBichitra whose untiring effort and enthusiasm have been so important in making it sure that we have present edition of our almanac ready and available on time.

I trust and hope that present edition of the Almanac will be received well by all like its previous editions and that our efforts gone into it will be found useful by its users.

Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed
Former Governor, Bangladesh Bank (Central Bank)
Professor, Graduate School of Management (GSM), BRAC University