The central bank warned the non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) against irregularities over lending and concealing information in reporting their financial affairs.
Officials said the fresh warning came at a meeting of the chief executive officers (CEOs) and managing directors (MDs) of NBFIs with Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Fazle Kabir in the central bank headquarters in Dhaka Wednesday.
The NBFIs may avail policy supports of the BB for adjustment of their capital market overexposures the way commercial banks did it without selling any shares to the market.
The meeting in principle decided to provide such facilities to the NBFIs like banks, according to the BB officials.
"We may provide such policy supports to the NBFIs like banks on case-to-case basis after submission of their applications to the department concerned of the central bank," SK Sur Chowdhury, deputy governor of the BB, told reporters after the meeting.
He also said the interested NBFIs will have to submit their applications to the BB with approval from their board of directors, if they are interested to avail such policy backing.
Under the existing policy, the NBFIs are allowed to adjust their overexposures through restructuring the exposure components and enhancing the capital of their subsidiaries with some internal adjustments.
A total of 13 out of 56 commercial banks have already availed such policy supports fort bringing down their capital market investments within 25 per cent of their total capital in line with the Banking Companies (Amended) Act 2013.
At the meeting, the top executives were cautioned that the BB would take stern action against them and others to protect depositors' interests, if such irregularities are found in future.
"We've already taken actions against a few top executives of NBFIs in this connection," Mr. Sur Chowdhury said while replying to a query.
The NBFIs have also been advised to go for long-term investment, particularly in infrastructure-development projects and bond market.
"We've advised the NBFIs not to behave like banks," the deputy governor explained.
At the meeting, the CEOs were advised to improve upon their quality of assets and take necessary measures to reduce the amount of non-performing loans (NPLs) through expediting their recover drives.
The NBFIs have also been instructed to play their due role in ensuring good governance in the sector.
"We've urged the central bank to raise our service charge to 1.0 per cent from the existing 0.5 per cent as loan-processing fee for maximum Tk 0.5 million instead of the existing Tk 0.20 million," Mafizuddin Sarker, chairman of Bangladesh Leasing and Finance Companies Association (BLFCA), told the reporters.
 The BB assured the NBFIs of examining the proposal, according to the BLFCA chairman.
Different issues like access of NBFIs to funds belonging to government, semi-government and autonomous bodies and tax on bond investment were also discussed at the meeting.  
Currently, 33 NBFIs are running their business across the country.
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Source: The Financial Express