The spending by the country's scheduled banks and financial institutions (FIs) on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes has nearly doubled in the first half of this year, compared to the same period in the previous year.
However, the state-run banks and FIs are trailing far behind private banks in terms of their contributions to CSR, as their combined spending sees no rise at all.
According to the half-yearly financial reports of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), all the scheduled banks and FIs spent Tk 3.26 billion in January-June period of 2017, Tk 4.17 billion in July-December period of 2017, and Tk 6.28 billion in the first six months of 2018.
In the January-June period of this year, the state-run banks account for only 0.31 per cent of total spending of Tk 6.28 billion while all the financial institutions contributed only Tk 15.7 million, the report revealed.
All the nine state-owned banks spent Tk 20 million, compared to Tk 6.22 billion spent by private banks, it says.
During the period, education programmes, among other CSR activities, got top priority, as the amount -- Tk 2.72 billion -- spent on them made up 43.40 per cent of the total spending while the second highest amount of Tk 2.46 billion (39.36 per cent) was spent on disaster management activities.
The education programmes accounted for 18 per cent and 38 per cent of the total spending in the first half and the second half of 2017 respectively, the reports shows.
During the same period, seven foreign corporate banks contributed 0.35 per cent to the total CSR spending.
Of the country's 57 scheduled banks, only eight banks accounted for major portion of the total spending on education programmes.
Out of 34 financial institutions in the country, 26 entities did not contribute to education programmes. FIs mostly contributed their money to cultural programmes.
About the contributions of state-owned banks and FIs to CSR activities, BB spokesperson Sirajul Islam said, "Profit-making banks and FIs spend a part of their net profit on CSR programmes. As the state-owned banks and FIs are making marginal profit, they contribute less to the CSR activities."
The central bank regularly monitors the CSR activities carried out by the banks, both in the public and private sectors, and give directions as to how they can increase their contributions, especially to education programmes, he added.
Former deputy governor of the Bangladesh Bank Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled told the FE that the scheduled banks have to spend 5.0 per cent of their net profit on CSR activities, but it's up to them which sector they choose for contribution.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has selected 24 sectors to which banks can contribute and avail tax exemption facility, he said.
As the spending is linked to net profit, state-owned banks could not contribute as much as private commercial banks do, he added.
