Global Financial Crisis: Impact on Bangladesh

Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed

Former Governor , Bangladesh Bank &
Professor,
Business School, BRAC University, Dhaka.

1) Started in

2007
: Housing sector bubble
2008
: Sub-Prime crisis
Failure of banks and Financial Institutions
Liquidity and Insolvency Problems

2) Main Reasons

: Lax Regulation
: Low Lending Rates

Added to these two is greed of top management people of the financial institutions.
3) Immediate and long term impact
- Transmission through Financial, Real and Trade Sectors
- Global Growth Scenario (estimates by some international
organizations)
:

World
USA
Euro Zone
Emerging Nations
Bangladesh:

2009
0.5-1.0
-2.6
-3.2
1.5-2.5

2010
1.5-2.5
0.2
0.1
3.5-4.5

Growth in 2007-08
6.2%
Projected growth in 2008-09 5.9%
Projected growth in 2009-10 6%

4) Impact on Bangladesh
-

Financial Sector
Real Sector
Trade Sector
Capital Inflow/ Outflow
Likely impact on remittance, export etc.
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5) BB Macro Situation
-

Forex Reserve 6.15 b$ (8/4.09)

Forex market stable
Remittance in 9 months (upto March09) 7029.51 m$
Remittance on 2007-2008 (12 months) 7914.78 m$
Current A/C & BOP balance positive
Government Budget deficit within satisfactory limit

Increase export earning and remittance

Ensure liquidity & flow of credit in productive sectors
Real sector impact to be minimized
Inward looking development (SME, Agr, Thrust Sectors) &
Employment Generation

6) Objectives of BB

7) Measures taken by Bangladesh Government

8) Global Responses
-

Bailout packages
G-20 Meeting
US Federal Reserve Bank to inject US $ 1 Trillion (March 2009)
International Accounting Standard Board
Financial Stability Board
New roles of IMF/WB, Washington DC Annual Meetings, October
2009.

1. The Global and individual country responses to come out of the present
global financial crisis have yielded modest results. The forecast of
growth and economic activities have been adjusted downwards and
these have implications on the performance of a developing country
like Bangladesh. The immediate impact of the global crisis has not
been felt in Bangladesh not only because Bangladesh economy is not
highly integrated with the global economy but also for some early
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actions taken in the macroeconomic management especially by the

Bangladesh Bank from mid 2008.
2. It is therefore necessary that the macro situation of Bangladesh, key
variables like exports, imports, remittances, money supply, inflation,
credit growth, and foreign exchange are examined to see the impact
on the macro economy and policy responses to mitigate the impact.
The first presentation of mine deals with that. The global crisis has
highlighted the transmission mechanism, particularly the role of
banking system in the process. Therefore, the second part of my
presentation focuses on the credit view of monetary transmission
vis--vis the meso economy where bank credit has direct impact on
various types of economic activities affecting growth and employment
at the sub-aggregate level.
3. The first part deals with:
a. Economic and Financial Developments:
i. Real Sector
ii. Monetary Sector
iii. Fiscal Sector
iv. External Sector
v. Price Developments.
b. Transmission Channels of Global Crisis & Impacts:
i. Imports
ii. Exports
iii. Exchange Rate
iv. Remittances
v. Foreign Exchange Reserve
vi. Import Payments & Tax Revenue
vii. Foreign Aid & FDI
c. Performance of Bangladesh Economy with the fall out of Global
Crisis.
d. Policy Responses:
i. Governments Fiscals & Tax Incentives
ii. Livelihood Support
iii. Agricultural Development
iv. Exports and Remittances
e. Projection of some key macroeconomic variables ?
i. In F y 10, export may rise by 5% to 6% compared to 11% in
F y 09.
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ii. Remittances may grow by 15% to 19% as against 22% in F

y 09.
iii. Import may fall by 4% to 7.5% in Fy 10 against an increase
of 4.2% in Fy 09.
iv. Inflation may rise to more than 7% in Fy 10 compared to
5.2% on September 09.
f. Further Policy Implications.
4. The second part, the review of meso economy deals with:
a. Bank lending trend in Bangladesh: Bank advances in all 4
quarters in Fy 09 higher than those of 2008. This is due rebound
of some economic activities, rising prices of oil and other
commodities in the international market. However, trade and
miscellaneous purposes dominated than other sectors at the
macro level. Subsequent sluggish growth, total credit growth in
July and August came down sharply to 0.56% and 0.67%
respectively over June 2008. There has been a growing demand
for consumer loan.
b. Gloomy picture of investment in recent months due to two
factors:
i. Downward rigidity in lending rates.
ii. Lack of infrastructural support like gas and electricity.
c. For meso picture 18 bank branches of 9 banks were selected for
data from vulnerable and emerging geographical areas. The
trend of credit from June 2008 to June 2009 at meso level gives a
mixed picture. In December 2008, there was a decline which
picked up in March 2009, going down again in June 2009, when
there was a decrease by 5.5% over March 2009. The slow down
at the meso level is more than that at the macro level. At the
meso level trade and miscellaneous sectors received high
advances because of private demand for quick yielding, less
risky ventures, compared to credit in industry, storage, transport
and communication. Moreover, the local economic activities at
meso level was not given due importance by the bank.
d. The private commercial banks (PCBs) have contributed more
than the SCBs, BKB, and RAKUB. In March 2009; SCBs,
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BKB/RAKUB and PCBs provided BDT 179 Crore, 54 crore, and

3409 crore respectively. In June 2009 these banks provided 177
crore, 57 crore and 3205 crore respectively.
e. It is high time that banks take proactive steps to provide credit in
the vulnerable and emerging geographical areas of Bangladesh.
The SCBs and specialized banks should be more aggressive and
dynamic to invigorate local economic activities to create
employment opportunities and improve livelihood of the poor
and disadvantaged people.
5. The global financial crisis shows that there is no substitute of prudent
government intervention and careful regulation even when market
determined incentive structures operate.
6. Some issues for further consideration:
a. How will the slowdown in global and regional growth impact
Bangladesh economy, financial system, markets, and
institutions?
b. What is the risk that the Bangladesh Bank faces in addressing
inflationary pressure given the preference for growth over
inflation?
c. What is the countrys current and historic experience in
managing growth in private sector credit and how effectively
Bangladesh Banks monetary policy stance can resolve the
present excess liquidity in the banking sector?
d. How effectively Fiscal, Monetary, Export-Import and Industrial
policies can work in tandem in taking the country into higher
growth path ensuring accelerated poverty reduction ?

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Chart 10

The Global Financial Crisis:

Daunting Tasks Ahead
.
The global financial and economic crisis started in 2007 as an aftermath of the housing sector
bubble coupled with aggressive lending practices in the US sub-prime mortgage market and lax
regulation of the financial sector. To start with, these developments affected the companies
holding mortgage-backed securities and credit derivatives. The early signs of the crisis were
evident in 2007; but the financial crisis developed into a full blown global recession in late 2008
battered by continuous deepening and widening of the crisis. The recession created shockwaves
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though the global financial system and the global economy, and the advanced economies were
affected most. The governments in these countries are bracing their financial sector and the real
economy by stepping up various policy measures including injecting huge sums of money for
bailing out the ailing financial institutions and other industries. What is worst is that the
recession appears to hang on throughout 2014.
The makings of the crisis were essentially in the US imbalances exported to the rest of the world,
over the last couple of decades or so, in the form of persistent current account deficits. The
position of US dollar as the dominant global reserve currency enable US to pursue lax
macroeconomic policies indefinitely, with its deficits financed externally by economies running
surpluses. Not since the beating down of US inflation in the nineteen eighties by US Fed under
Paul Volcker at substantial pain of a domestic recession has the US opted again for domestic
adjustments to correct imbalances; nor unlike the EU, has the US

committed itself

unequivocally to pursuing balanced policies (fiscal accounts were in balance in the Clinton era
but private sector deficit unrestrained, and in the subsequent Bush era deficits of both public and
private sectors ran amok).
In the lax US monetary and fiscal policy regime the surfeit of cheap liquidity surged in several
aberrant directions chasing higher returns; into speculation creating commodity and asset price
bubbles (the incipient US house price bubble at the turn of the century actually eased the pains
from the dot com bubble burst), into equity buybacks with reckless leveraging (improving return
on equity but worsening the fragility of corporate finance), into loans to borrowers of dubious
credit and securities backed thereby, into derivatives of inscrutable complexity concealing the
riskiness of the underlying assets. Close global integration transmitted these trends of the US
financial markets and institutions quickly to the other open economies, including those pursuing
balanced policies. Also, the laxities of US monetary policies immediately and automatically
surfaced in the economies with currencies pegged to US dollar, including the Middle Eastern oil
exporters. The surging wealth from price bubbles in commodities and assets flowed not into
combating global poverty, environmental degradation or climate change; but largely into
hedonism of private jets, yachts, mansions and other indulgences including such whimsical,
fanciful pursuits as competition in mega scale fairytale-like construction projects, artificial islets
curved in the Gulf with coastlines alien to known laws of hydrodynamics, mega dollar artworks
like golden lamb and Kate Moss gold statue. Now the whole fantasy structure faces collapse as
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popping price bubbles triggered chains of debt default, paralyzing markets with freeze up of
fresh lending to refinance maturing debts.
Small economies like Bangladesh are however by no means invulnerable to fallouts from
prolonged global downturns or to negative spillovers of policies of large economies, and
therefore have strong stake in global stability. In forums like G-20 they need to argue forcefully
for the same high priority to stability as to recovery; and also for stability action agenda going
beyond addressing symptoms (lapses in risk managements, inadequacies of regulation and
supervision) to addressing the underlying cause (lax policies allowing unbridled liquidity
expansion, incubating bubbles).
A safe path of global balance and stability will be a lot easier if global liquidity growth is tied to
the growth of real global output in some mechanism that injects and withdraws liquidity countercyclically as global real output growth slackens or paces up. The IMF (reformed with
appropriately rebalanced voting rights and quotas for member economies) can be mandated to
craft and administer the tying mechanism, in a new role somewhat as the apex global monetary
agency.
Consensus building for such a new mechanism (in broad likeness of gold standard, with real
global output substituting for gold) may be arduous, all the more reason for kicking off the
consultation processes at the soonest possible.
Significant gain in global financial stability can be expected also from reforms limiting excessive
leverage in corporate finance. In the current crisis the high fragility brought about by reckless
substitution of equity with debt precipitated extended chains of debt defaults, paralyzing
financial markets across major economies. A corporate generally favors debt over equity because
debt servicing costs are tax deductible while income on equity is subject to taxation. However, in
downturns, debt burden deepens a firms financial distress, even inviting demise, as made amply
evident by the current global financial crisis.
The Bank for International Settlement (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland for some years is engaged in
developing global norms of capital adequacy for banks and financial institutions. BIS can also be
mandated to develop global norms of debt equity balance and sound practices in corporate
financing, limiting tendencies of excessive leveraging. To this end, some extent of tax break on
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income from equity, narrowing the gap in relative attractiveness of debt and equity as financing
option, may also be well worth considering.

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