The Farmers Bank has appointed former Sonali Bank managing director Pradip Kumar Dutta as consultant to help the trouble-hit lender ride out the ongoing liquidity crunch and win back depositors' confidence.

Dutta was appointed on Friday for two years following a special board meeting at the bank's head office in Dhaka. The appointment will be complete after getting the approval from the central bank.

The former CEO told The Daily Star yesterday that Farmers Bank's board had requested him to join the bank to tackle the ongoing crisis.

"I am confident that I will be able to manage the existing problem of the bank. The next five to seven days will be critical to bring the situation under control," Dutta said.

Set up only four years ago, Farmers Bank has been facing acute liquidity crisis for the last few months because of its failure to draw in depositors despite offering 12 percent interest on savings schemes.

The cash-strapped bank got a short-term loan amounting to Tk 96 crore from the central bank on Tuesday.

Farmers Bank counted 6.75 percent interest to secure the loan, which is at least 2 percentage points more than the inter-bank call money rate.

Earlier this month the bank twice failed to honour a cheque of Bangladesh Telecommu-nications Company Ltd worth Tk 35.44 crore because of fund shortage. The state-run telecom company has now got the sum.