Bangladeshi ‘bank for the poor’ Grameen has new chairman, Abdul Hannan Chowdhury

By Andrei Skvarsky.

The post of chairman of Grameen Bank, a Bangladeshi state-owned microfinance lender set up as a poverty reduction vehicle four decades ago by Muhammad Yunus, an economist and politician who heads Bangladesh’s current interim government, has passed over to university professor Abdul Hannan Chowdhury.

Chowdhury, a professor at the School of Business and Economics of North South University in Dhaka, replaces Abul Kalam Mohammad Saiful Majid, also an academic, the United News of Bangladesh (UNB) agency said in a statement, citing the Finance Ministry.

As other staff moves at what styles itself a “bank for the poor”, Farhana Ferdousi, an associate professor at Dhaka’s Southeast University, has joined the board of directors and civil servant Mohammad Salah Uddin has left the board, UNB said.

Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding Grameen in 1983. The Nobel Prize Organisation credited the bank with effective poverty eradication activities.

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