Business Desk :
Trouble-hit Bangladesh Industrial Finance Company Ltd (BIFC) suffered losses in 2020, extending its loss to the sixth financial year.
The non-bank financial institutions reported negative earnings per share of Tk 8.10 for the year that ended on December 31 of 2020 against Tk 12.20 in the negative a year ago, according to a filing on the Dhaka Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The last time BIFC made a profit came in 2014 when its EPS stood at Tk 0.55, data from the bourse showed.
Net asset value per share widened to Tk 102.37 in the negative in 2020 from Tk 94.27 in the negative in 2019, while net operating cash flow per share was Tk 2.78 in the negative in 2020 compared to a negative Tk 4.26 in the previous year.
The board of directors recommended no dividend for 2020.
BIFC is one of the NBFIs that are the victim of loan scams committed by PK Halder and his associates.
The swindler embezzled around Tk 500 crore from the NBFI. Moreover, a business group owned by Abdul Mannan, a former state minister, plundered around Tk 1,000 crore, showed a case statement of the Anti-Corruption Commission showed earlier.
In a probe in 2016, the Bangladesh Bank found former BIFC Chairman Mannan largely responsible for the institution’s financial crisis.
The financial health of BIFC, established in 1998 by a group of entrepreneurs led by Mannan, started to decline in 2008.
The BB found that Mannan and his family members embezzled Tk 518 crore from BIFC between 2005 and 2015 in the form of loans against 53 fictitious companies and individuals. The loans became bad in 2015.
The central bank removed Mannan’s wife Umme Kulsum Mannan, also a former BIFC chairman, and their two daughters from the board between 2015 and 2016 for alleged involvement in sanctioning the loans unlawfully.
Currently, a court-appointed board is running the NBFI.
