Kazi Zahidul Hasan :Different banks restructured default loans for Tk 24,000 crore last year, availing a special loan rescheduling policy offered by the country’s central bank.These banks rescheduled the loan accounts of the big corporate groups and business houses, official sources said.Earlier, Bangladesh Bank (BB) issued guidelines for large loan restructuring, allowing more time for the borrowers who have been unable to pay back their loans due to ‘unavoidable’ circumstances.”We have rescheduled loans of several big borrowers under the cover of the BB’s guideline to accommodate their financial difficulty,” a senior executive of a state-owned commercial bank told The New Nation on Tuesday preferring anonymity. He said the authorities of his bank restructured nearly Tk 2000 crore default loans of a big corporate house of our country. “The loan was rescheduled properly as per the central bank’s guidelines and no undue facility was provided to the group,” he claimed. Insiders in the central bank said, the country’s banking regulator eased the loan reschedule policy under political pressure. “Even, some big loans were restructured without complying with the provision of down payment,” said an official of BB. “The central bank from time to time has been offering a relaxed loan rescheduling policy which will not bring good result for the banking sector in the end,” said former BB Governor Dr Salehuddin Ahmed.He added: Such policy is largely going in favour of the large borrowers, but flows against the small borrowers, who suffer most in any turmoil political situation.The central bank must apply strict policy to recover all kinds of loans, otherwise, it will jeopardize discipline of the sector, he opined. Dr Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled, a former Deputy Governor of the central bank, said that the BB should not allow this kind of facility time and under political pressure.He further said that those, who took loans from different banks resorting to irregularities or defaulted willfully on many occasions, rescheduled those loans taking advantage of BB’s policy. It should be very cautious before formulating any relaxed loan rescheduling policy in future, he added. However, interestingly the amount of the overall default loans in the banking sector marked a fall by the end of December last year due to the central bank’s policy. The total default loan amount came down to Tk 50,000 crore at the end of December from Tk 57,290 in September last year, marking a fall by Tk7,290 crore on quarterly basis, according to a statistics of the central bank. The default loan rate stood at 9.69 per cent during the last quarter (October-December) of the year 2014 compared with 11.60 per cent in the 3rd quarter (July-September).
