Nagad, the state owned mobile financial service, on Sunday gave Tk 1,12,15,576 to the postal department as a part of the earnings.

Tanvir Ahmed Mishuk, managing director Nagad, handed over a cheque to Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar in a function at the newly constructed building of the Postal Department, said a press release.

Nagad gave the amount to the postal department as part of the services revenue, which is counted as the postal department’s net income, for the just ended 2019-20 financial year.

Although the postal department never received net income from any of its other services, they got this extra income just a year and a half after the journey of Nagad. It is a unique example for the postal department to get a share of the income without any investment and that is only possible for the public private partnership.

Such revenue of the postal department through Nagad will further expand the door of digital financial services in the country for the coming days.

Md. Nur-Ur-Rahman, secretary of the department of Posts and Telecommunications and Sudhangshu Shekhar Bhadra, director general of the Directorate of Posts were present at the occasion along with senior officials of Nagad.

Even in the ongoing Covid crisis, Nagad has expanded its service network by increasing the quality of the services and kept the wheel of avenue which also helps to get the postal department to earn from any of their service in the two-hundred-year history of the postal service in the region for the first time.

Traditionally the overall revenue and expenditure account of the postal department is always negative and though the financial statement of 2019-20 yet to finalise, surely it will continue in the previous years. In the 2018-19 financial year, the deficit between the revenue and expenditure of the postal department was Tk 433 crore which was Tk 438 crore in the financial year of 2017-18.

In the first year after independence, the postal department also started with losses of Tk 1.60 crore. Since then, the deficit has increased over time. However, with the introduction of digital financial services like Nagad, the entire postal department seems to have got a chance to wake up anew. Nagad is now one of the postal department’s arms, and could be the main in the future.

Honorable Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar expressed his satisfaction over the success of the state owned digital financial service and said, “This is a historic moment. I never thought that the postal department can bring such an achievement. And I am observing that the advancement of the postal department started with Nagad. I also believe that the postal department will turn around in the future with this path of Nagad. The almost impossible task has been made possible by the venture combining the innovation of private entrepreneurs with government support in the form of public-private partnership.”

After the success of MFS service Nagad is now dreaming to convert it as a digital bank. If that happens, it will be possible to easily bring all the people of the country into digital financial services.

In order to ease the life of the people by keeping the service running during the Covid time Nagad ensured the health safety to the employees and they also disbursed huge amounts of government assistance to beneficiaries and also on boarded new services to their platform to ensure people stay at home. In that continuity, the income of Nagad keeps increasing.

Tanvir Ahmed Mishuk, managing director of Nagad, said, “From the very beginning, we have designed our service structure with the utmost importance on citizens' needs. That is why Nagad has been able to come up with the latest services at the lowest cost. As a result, the Asian-Pacific Postal Union recognised Nagad as the world's fastest growing digital financial service within a year of its launch. The day is not far away when the reputation of the postal department of the country will spread all over the world through Nagad. And Nagad will be the country's national digital financial services company.”

BDST: 1735 HRS, SEP 06, 2020
AP/SMS