Award for Bangladesh bank programme

The state-owned Bangladesh Krishi Bank has won the prestigious Asian Banking award for its programme to rehabilitate slum dwellers from the capital, Dhaka, back into their village communities.

The Asian Bankers Association, who made the award, praised the bank for its micro-credit system that allows slum dwellers to start small businesses and farming projects in their native villages.

The programme has helped more than 14,000 people in the two years since its launch.

However, a BBC correspondent says hundreds of thousands of people continue to migrate to the cities as rural poverty grows, and leading town planners are pessimistic about the opportunity for substantial changes in the situation.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service