Staff Reporter :
The scam-hit BASIC Bank has once again requested for a bailout fund amounting to Tk 2,000 crore from the government in a bid to plug up its capital shortfall, officials said.
They said, the state-owned specialized bank has renewed the call for extending the bailout in an open letter to the top officials of finance division recently.
Admitting the matter, a senior finance division official told The New Nation on Saturday that the bank had once again requested for bailout fund from the division before its plunging into a deeper capital shortfall.
“The appeal is designed to help recapitalisation of the troubled bank facing a capital short-fall of Tk 3,600 crore at the end of 2014,” he added.
The finance division official further said that mired by the poor governance, the bank had already sunk into grave crisis. “There is an apprehension that it might collapse soon unless the government takes a bailout plan for it,” opines the official
“Big loan scandals and soaring classified loans in the bank’s overall credit portfolios pushed it into a deeper capital hole. We are going through the letter of the bank but the release of the fund would take time”, said the official
Prior to it in June, the bank sought the similar amount of fund from the national exchequer, but the finance division rejected it at that time.
BASIC had received Tk 1,290 crore in the past fiscal year exchequer to recoup its capital shortfall.
According to an official figure, the total classified loan of the bank stands at Tk Tk 8,108 crore as of 2014, which was around 91 per cent of its total loans and advances amounting to Tk 8,939 crore.
Of the total defaulted amount, the bank had transferred around Tk 3,000 crore to “classified block assets” with the permission of Bangladesh Bank (BB).
The required provision against the classified amount has been calculated at Tk 1,933 crore. BB also allowed the bank to maintain the provision shortfall in 10 years from 2015.
As a result, the default loan amount to the financial statement stood at Tk5,109 crore or 57.15 per cent of total loans and advances.
Besides, the required provision of the classified loan amount stood at Tk2,364 crore at the end of 2014, of which the bank kept only Tk 430.64 crore.
BB had given the bank exemption from meeting the rest of the shortfall of over Tk 1,933 crore for five years.
According to an inquiry of Bangladesh Bank, about Tk 4500 crore was swindled out from Basic Bank in last six years when Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu was the chairman of the bank.
The money was plundered from the bank by 54 private companies while taking loans showing fake documents.
