2024-02-12 14:56:42
The Financial Institutions and Markets Department of the Ministry of Finance has given new guidelines regarding ‘Utsah Bonus’ (incentive bonus) to the officers and employees of state-owned banks. The new guidelines impose several conditions on the incentive bonus.
On Sunday (February 11), the Joint Secretary of the Financial Institutions and Markets Department of the Ministry of Finance said. Shah Alam has released guidelines in this regard under the name ‘Utsah Bonus’.
According to the guidelines, ‘incentive bonus’ is not a right, it is a financial benefit given at the discretion of the board. Paying this bonus directly puts pressure on cash and reduces it. Due to this, new guidelines have been issued. As a result, the board of directors of government banks cannot give more than three bonuses even if they want to.
The guidelines also said that the guidelines were drafted in 2014 to provide financial facilities to state-owned commercial banks. The recommendation was to give bonus based on the rate of net profit on working funds, but in the current context the state-owned bank Bangladesh Bank is showing the latter with the benefit of saving provisions. As a result, if the banks actually adjusted the provision deficit, they would have incurred losses instead of net profit, said the Ministry of Finance.
According to the ministry, the state-owned banks are not able to earn their desired profits due to providing low interest loans to various sectors of the government, providing various services to the government for free and various services related to social security. In such a situation guidelines have been given regarding incentive bonus with the objective of voluntary participation of overall growth and development officers of the banks.
The new guidelines set a score of 20 percent on annual performance agreement (APA) implementation rate of banks and 80 percent on operating profit rate. Based on this score the incentive bonus will be distributed from the operating profit. As a result, from now on, no bank will be able to give any bonus if the score is below 50. A score of 50 to 60 will get an incentive bonus equal to one month’s basic salary, 61 to 70 will get one and a half months, 71 to 80 two months, 81 to 90 two and a half months and scores above 90 will get a festive bonus equal to three months’ basic salary.
Officials of state-owned banks said that until now, the board of their respective banks used to decide the amount of incentive bonus by considering the net profit. By doing this, the employees of banks and financial institutions got three to four bonuses in a year. As a result of the new guidelines, state-owned banks will not be able to pay more than three bonuses.
Officials of state-owned banks have expressed anger over the imposition of conditions on the ‘stimulus bonus’. They say the incentive bonus has been reduced by the new guidelines. As a result, the officers and employees of state-owned banks will lose interest in work.
Several conditions have been laid down for the implementation of the guidelines regarding incentive bonus and determination of scores, among which if one wants to give incentive bonus outside these guidelines, the approval of the Financial Institutions Department is required. The guideline states to calculate the operating profit by deducting the total operating expenses from the total operating income of the bank.