They also blamed high service charges and overlapping operations for not yielding optimum results of micro credit.

The roundtable on Micro-finance Vision Bangladesh-Global Microcredit Summit 2006: Bangladesh Perspective and Exceptions was held at a city hotel.

Plan Bangladesh, Credit and Development Forum (CDF), Federation of NGOs in Bangladesh (FNB) and International Network of Alternative Financial Institutions (INAFI) jointly organised it. The Daily Star supported the roundtable as media partner.

The main objective of the roundtable is to document voices from the grassroots and expectations of Bangladesh from the Microcredit Summit-2006 to be held in Halifax, Canada on November 12-15 this year.

The speakers also emphasised the need for bridging gap between banking and micro finance sectors.

Hua Du, country director, Asian Development Bank (ADB), said the MFIs can operate diversified activities such as credit savings, remittance management and other non-financial activities.

"There is a lot of opportunities for the MFIs as formal financial activities cover only 16 percent of the total activities," Hua Du said.

Terming the MFIs' interest rate high, she said the government and the micro finance institutions should complement each other by putting hands together.

Veteran banker Khondoker Ibrahim Khaled suggested formation of a financial consortium to lend MFIs available funds and a banks-MFIs collaboration to operate banking activities in the remote areas.

He came down heavily on the micro-finance regulatory authority at the central bank and suggested managing the authority by micro-finance people.

Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, said many outsiders are suspicious and questioning the transparency of the sector.

"To sustain your success and reinforce it there should be more transparency in the micro finance sector," he suggested.

Mamun Rashid, country officer, Citibank NA, said the biggest challenge before the MFIs is how they can ensure robust control on it through applying technology and quality receivables.

He said the Citigroup is trying to arrange the next micro credit summit in Bangladesh.

Dr Muhammad Ibrahim, chair, FNB, moderated the roundtable where Imrul Hasan, adviser, Plan Bangladesh, presented a keynote speech.

Mosharraf Hossain Khan, DMD, PKSF, Dr Sajjad Zohir, executive director, Economic Research Group, Khondker Mazharul Huq, EVC, Micro Credit Regulatory Authority, Hosne Ara Begum, executive director, TMSS, Yasmin Ahmed, chief executive, Nova Consultancy, Leela Rashid, joint director, Bangladesh Bank, and Sukhwinder S. Arora, private sector specialist, Pro-Poor Growth Team, DFID, also spoke on the occasion.

The organisers arranged five regional workshops consulting 300 NGO-MFIs and a national level roundtable bringing micro-finace leaders, academics, politicians, bankers and journalists to present overall findings in the summit 2006.

The participants expressed hope to work in favour of the global microcredit summit goals to bring 175 million world poorest families under credit network and improve purchasing power of 100 million families to above $1a day.