Applicants for share credit to get one more month

Retail investors, who had lost money in stockmarket downswings in 2011, will get one more month to apply for share credit from the government's Tk 900 crore refinancing scheme.
Under the new deadline, retail investors will have to apply by January 31, said a member of the surveillance committee of the refinancing scheme. A guideline for the scheme was approved by the finance ministry in August 2013.
As per the previous timeframe, investors were permitted to apply for share credit under the refinancing scheme till yesterday.
But the surveillance committee extended the deadline by another month, considering the overall situation, said Saifur Rahman, a committee member and executive director of Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission.
The panel, comprising representatives from the central bank, BSEC and Investment Corporation of Bangladesh, is also responsible for monitoring the scheme operations and submitting a report to the finance ministry every quarter.
The affected retail investors, with smaller than Tk 10 lakh in exposure from January 2009 to November 2011, are eligible for the fund.
As of yesterday, around 12,600 retail investors applied for share credit worth Tk 346 crore through 35 merchant banks and stockbrokers.

Scrutinising the applications, ICB, the scheme manager, sanctioned Tk 66.68 crore for 2,131 retail investors.
The state-run investment company got the fund at 5 percent interest from Bangladesh Bank and lent it to merchant banks and stockbrokers at 7 percent.
The merchant banks and the stockbrokers then disbursed the funds to retail investors at 9 percent.
The borrowers will have to repay the loans every three months.
On August 25 last year, the central bank released the first instalment of Tk 300 crore in favour of ICB.
The remaining Tk 600 crore will be released in two equal instalments later.
In March 2012, the government announced a compensation package that also included an interest waiver on margin loans for the investors who suffered losses during the price debacle in 2011.