BoC as trail-blazer in economic empowerment

Lynn Ockersz

Superior customer service, and absolute value for money are two vital directions in which the General Manager of the Bank of Ceylon, B.A.C. Fernando, hopes to take the Bank. However, equally vital is BoC's contribution to national development.

As the G.M. reveals in this interview, the Bank is making vast, steady strides towards narrowing the country's wealth gap and enhancing the economic sustenance of the people.

Q: As the new General Manager of BoC, in which direction do you hope to take the Bank?

A: When speaking of new directions we have two broad areas in mind. One is that we want to associate ourselves as an institution which provides very good customer service. That is, if anyone is speaking of superior customer service he should be able to link it with BoC.

The other area is that we want to give the customer real value for money. If the customer pays for any of our services they should feel that they have got value for money.

Q: How will you make the Bank respond to national needs?

A: In the national budget last year it spoke of the 'Ran Dora' strategy, under Mahinda Chinthana for the economic development of the country. In that direction, one problem is the regional imbalance in economic wealth that we have.

To address it, outside the Western Province we provide large loans at two thirds of the normal rate of interest that we charge. We reduce one third of the interest for such projects, if they have an employment generation potential. It is called 'Gamata Naye'.

Apart from this we have a number of schemes which are important from national development viewpoint.

Just a few of these are: the 'Govi Shakthi' Credit Scheme, Government Employees Housing Loan Scheme, 'Deevara Shakthi' Credit and Savings Scheme, BoC Personal Computer Loan Scheme, National Teachers P.C. Drive Special Loan Scheme and the Motor Vehicle Loan Scheme for Government Employees. In a vital sense, these are Corporate Social Responsibility Projects of BoC.

Special mention should be made of the project we are doing with Pelwatta Sugar Industries Ltd. We are providing financial assistance to 6000 settler farmers and 4341 out grower farmers.

It is a massive project and the owners have also joined us and have stipulated that if there are farmers who could increase their production beyond 100 metric tonnes per hectare, their entire interest would be paid by the company. It is an effective way of developing people and enhancing production.

Apart from this we have the Sukshme Loan Scheme which aims at generating livelihoods and enables them to stand on their own feet and contribute towards national development.

Q: Are you into micro credit?

A: The definition of micro differs from one institution to the other. Under the 'Sukshme Scheme' we provide micro credit. We also have a scheme for the war-affected communities of the North-East and border districts. In relation to these areas we have World Bank Funded Sustainable Livelihood Support Activities. The amount allocated comes to 6.5 billion rupees.

We expect to reach 400,000 persons through this project, in about 600 villages. This is going to be a massive project for micro entrepreneurs.

Q: Any projects particularly targeted at the corporate business community?

A: Yes, we have many. For instance we have a package called Bank Trade. The customer interface of that is called Client Trade. We intend to introduce the latter to the topmost 50 customers.

The intention is that they could operate their accounts and open their LCs from their own locations without coming to the Bank. We will provide them with a screen and they could do all their transactions on it, other than depositing physical cash. We could claim that this is the best package available in the country.

Q: Any schemes to help our migrant worker community?

A: Yes, we help the migrant workers in a big way. At the moment we have 12 representatives, whom we are going to increase to 20. Purely to advise these workers and assist them on how they could remit money or save it and obtain other facilities. We provide housing loans to migrant workers at five percent interest.

The scheme is called 'Sarani'. During the forthcoming Sinhala and Tamil New Year season, most of our senior officials would be going to those countries to educate our workers on our services and even to Australia.

In Australia we have clients who do not really belong to the worker group. They are high networking and educated Lankans. They are not being tapped at the moment by BoC. We are going to assist them with our technological capabilities. We could give them a superior service wherein they could operate their accounts through the Internet.

We are aware that these migrant workers bring a large amount of foreign exchange, although it is little realised. So, they deserve to be treated well and we assist them in the best ways possible. Many of these migrant workers do not even have a dollar when they leave Sri Lanka. But the Bank deposits five dollars each and opens an account for them.

All they have to do is take their account numbers along with them.

This is done merely to facilitate them because when they go abroad many of them are at a loss as to how they should go about their affairs. So at the airport itself we give them an account number with a five dollar deposit, to steady them financially.