All the banks have become ‘black holes’ that grabbed big amounts of public money in the years. Despite injecting several crores of taka; the reserved capital and overall indicators have been freefalling due to poor governance, corrupt management, forceful loan disbursement to fixed men, small realisation, and the government’s bizarre reluctance to reveal the loan defaulters. Country’s banking system is not following the corporate governance rule. The system violators and loan defaulters are the same folk, and enjoying impunity.
News media reported that scam-hit Sonali Bank, Janata Bank and BASIC Bank sought Tk 11,000 crore or 55 percent of the overall demand. Sonali Bank, which could not recover a single penny from its loan scam of Tk 3,500 crore given to little known Hallmark Group in 2013, demanded Tk 6,000 crore. Janata Bank demanded Tk 2,500 crore after its capital shortfall of Tk 1,273 crore till September 2017. BASIC Bank has been facing capital shortfall of Tk 2,500 crore because of extension of shady loans of over Tk 6,000 crore during the tenure of former chairman Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu, reportedly appointed on political consideration. Capital shortfalls stood Tk 1,250 crore for Rupali Bank and Tk 21 lakh for Grameen Bank. Specialised banks Bangladesh Krishi Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank are facing capital shortfalls of Tk 7,540 crore and Tk 800 crore respectively.
The government gave Tk 14,655 crore from the budgetary allocations between 2010-2011 and 2016-17 to bail out state-owned banks. The major portion of the bailout fund (Tk 6,395 crore) was given to scam-hit Sonali and BASIC despite experts arguments that the public money was going into ‘black holes’. Experts continued demanding an end to recapitalisation of the SoBs especially the scam-hit banks.
We know the bad loans were disbursed on political consideration. Besides, the loan defaulters and the top managements of the banks are politically backed. So, overall reformation is a must to save the banking sector. Wasting taxpayers’ money in the lockless vaults should be averted. The scam-hit state-run banks must recover the bad loans first.
