Finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Tuesday told parliament that the number of loan defaulters in the country was now 2,02,623.
The defaulters, persons or companies, had borrowed money from 55 state-run and private commercial banks and defaulted on their loans till March this year, Muhith said while replying to an Awami League lawmaker Pinu Khan’s question.
The finance minister, however, did not mention the total amount of money the defaulters had borrowed from the banks and defaulted on.
Bangladesh Bank data prepared in March showed that the amount of defaulted loans in the country’s banking sector stood at Tk 73,409 crore.
More than Tk 42,000 crore has been written off, a separate BB data showed.
Muhith said, ‘The government has already enacted Artha Rin Adalat Ain 2003 to realise the money and cases have been filed under the law,’ said.
‘Bangladesh Bank has also provided necessary directives to the banks to realise the money,’ the minister said in his scripted answer.
Responding to another question of opposition Jaitya Party lawmaker Pir Fazlur Rahman, the minister said the government outlined various measures to bring the loan defaulters to book.
According to the statistics placed by the minister before parliament, the defaulters have been holding some Tk 41,401 crore in loans taken from eight state-run banks and Tk 3,152 crore has been realised from the defaulters between July, 2016 and March, 2017.
Sonali Bank realised Tk 654 crore against its defaulted loans of Tk 10,629 crore, Janata Bank realised Tk 254 crore against Tk 6,510 crore, Agrani Bank realised Tk 483 crore against Tk 6,086 crore and Rupali Bank realised Tk 328 crore against Tk 4,264 crore.
BASIC Bank realised Tk 150 crore against its defaulted loans of Tk 7,374 crore, Bangladesh Development Bank realised Tk 130 crore against Tk 854 crore, Bangladesh Krishi Bank realised Tk 930 crore against Tk 4,679 crore and Rajshahi Krishi Unnyana Bank realised Tk 223 crore against Tk 1,005 crore.
While responding to a question from AL MP Mohammad Abdullah, Muhith said Bangladesh did not get back $66.37
million of the stolen money of $101 million from the Bangladesh Bank reserve till now.
Source: New Age