Sonali Bank, the largest state-owned bank, is plagued with default loans.
Its default loans reached Tk 124.71 billion, 33.92 percent of its total lending on date.
Sonali Bank Managing Director Pradip Kumar Dutta told a news conference that 20 big-time defaulters account for Tk 45 billion of the default loans — one third of the total figure.
“The main problems with Sonali Bank are default loan and capital deficit. Of them, default loan is the largest problem,” Dutta said.
He said the capital deficit stood at Tk 52.61 billion.
The press conference was convened to present the latest financial condition of the state-owned bank.
Dutta said Hall-Mark took away Tk 26 billion from the bank in connivance with its officials through forgery and all the money had turned default.
Hall-Mark scam and the way default loans are calculated now have contributed to the rise in the figure, he added.
The MD said: “We wanted to realize all default loans within 2013. Special initiatives have been taken to invigorate realization of default loans from the 20 big defaulters.”
“Separate targets have been set for the branch managers. We’ve fixed a target to realize Tk 80 billion of default loans this year.”
Dutta, however, admitted that the realization in the last eight months fell short of the target.
He said only Tk 25.5 billion, including Tk 12 billion in cash, had been realized in the eight months until August.
He claimed that the situation had been improving since Sept, 2012 and hoped Tk 50 billion would be realized until the end of December.
Source: Bd news24