BANKS’ defaulted loans swelled to Tk 1,16,288 crore in the end of September from Tk 1,12,425 crore in June due to Bangladesh Bank’s inaction to crack down on wilful defaulters along with allowing special loan rescheduling facilities encouraging borrowers not to pay back their loans. It was learnt that Tk 22,377 crore in classified loans had been added to the tally of December. Like other times, economists and bankers this time also attributed the situation to the politically motivated move to reschedule the repayments in easy terms that instigated the borrowers. Even the individuals and entities with good repayment record refrained from repaying instalments to avail the new opportunity. That means, the central bank’s policy was only to make happy the big loan defaulters. What’s true is that the measures taken by the Bangladesh Bank failed to improve the condition of ailing banks. Rather, the immoral defaulters were largely encouraged resulting in taking the banks on the verge of collapse.
Though Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal earlier had assured the countrymen that there would be no further increase in defaulted loans, there was an increase by 23.83 per cent from January to September. Bankers categorically blamed that rescheduling defaulted loans for 10-year with one year’s grace period on two per cent down payment has intensified the crisis. When the repayment schedule of defaulted loans are extended by 10 years at nine per cent interest and the borrowers with good payment records are made to repay in three or four years at 13-15 per cent interest – it means the defaulters were encouraged and good borrowers were punished.
The overall banking sector has been going through a disastrous situation allegedly due to rampant looting in the name of providing big amount of loans to ruling party-backed businessmen. They were never interested to pay back their loans. Now the latest policy package of central bank has paved the way for them to loot more.
