Industrial NPLs rise for habitual defaulters

Non-performing loans (NPLs) in the industrial sector soared 48.58 percent at the end of last fiscal year as habitual defaulters continued to show reluctance towards repayment of their rescheduled loans.

The country’s business sector also faced sluggishness last fiscal year, putting an adverse impact on industrial default loans, bankers said.

At the end of June, industrial default loans stood at Tk 57,201 crore, up from Tk 38,499 crore a year earlier, according to data from the Bangladesh Bank.

Banks had rescheduled a large amount of default loans in recent years, but they failed to get the desired outcome from the rescheduling programme, said Syed Mahbubur Rahman, chairman of the Association of Bankers, Bangladesh, a forum of private banks’ managing directors.

A good amount of rescheduled loans turned into default in fiscal 2018-19 as habitual defaulters did not use the rescheduling facility accurately, he said.

https://www.thedailystar.net/business/news/industrial-npls-rise-habitual-defaulters-1821046