Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has recommended introducing a provision for taking the permission of Bangladesh Bank alongside the board of directors of the bank concerned about writing off any loan, and listing all the directors of the organisation whose loan is written off as defaulters.
It also suggested introducing another provision to ensure that no loan is written off without filing any case.
The national anti-graft body put forward a 10-point recommendation to the central bank and the Finance Ministry on Monday about the loan write-off, ACC public relations officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharjee said.
The other recommendations include specifying the reasons before writing off the loan, looking into the fact that whether the businessmen have transferred the loan fund to elsewhere, mentioning whether the bank management concerned has any fault/irregularity in the process from sanctioning to writing off loan, taking highest measures as per the existing law to realise the loan and introducing a provision of filing two cases before writing off any loan.
Pranab said an ACC inquiry team came up with the suggestions after reviewing five written-off loans of AB Bank Ltd, National Bank Ltd and Bangladesh Development Bank Ltd each in the last 15 years.
According to Bangladesh Bank data released recently, the total written-off loans between January 2003 and June 2017 stood at Tk 45,527 crore while banks wrote off Tk 452 crore in three months till June last year, up by over 18 times from Tk 24.76 crore in the previous three months.
State-owned banks wrote off Tk 22,435 crore loans while private banks Tk 21,674 crore as of June last year.
Two state-run specialised banks-Bangladesh Krishi Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank-have written off Tk 555 crore and foreign commercial banks Tk 863 crore.
Loans are written off after making adequate provisions to take advantage of tax benefits. So the central bank introduced the policy to show a decreased amount of default loans on the banks’ balance sheet in 2003.
Written-off loans are like uncollectable loans and the recovery process of such loan is highly difficult.
