DHAKA, Feb 26, 2025 (BSS) –
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Ahsan H Mansur today informed that the central bank is working to bring back people’s confidence in banking sector to take the country’s economy in a better position.
“We are not thinking that any immediate crisis will come from balance of payment or banking sector as our foreign-currency reserves are in a comfortable level. If we can increase our deposit, we will be in a good position. We are working to make a strong banking sector,” he said.
The BB chief said this while speaking at a press briefing at the central bank headquarters in the city.
According to the latest report from Bangladesh Bank, the aggregate deposits with the banks rose by Tk 345.17 billion to over Tk 17.77 trillion by the end of December 2024.
As of yesterday, Dr Mansur said that Bangladesh’s gross foreign exchange reserves have crossed US$26 billion, which was over $21 billion according to the BPM-6 calculation standard of the IMF.
He informed that non-performing loans (NPLs) reached a record Tk 345,764 crore at the end of December last year, accounting for 20.20 percent of total disbursed loans.
NPLs stood at Tk 284,977 crore at the end of September last year, which was 16.93 percent of total outstanding loans at the time, he added.
As of December 2024, he said 42.83 percent of total loans in state-owned banks were classified as non-performing and 15.60 percent of total loans in private banks were non-performing.
The BB chief said the rise in NPLs is largely due to a long-standing lack of transparency in reporting bad loans and changes in loan classification policies.
Previously, he said, loans were classified as overdue after 270 days, but the timeframe has now been reduced to 180 days.
Furthermore, starting from April 2025, loans will be classified as non-performing within just 90 days, he mentioned.
The governor warned that with this new policy, NPLs are expected to rise even further in the coming months.
“Now we are giving actual data. We are also changing law. For this, NPL is increasing. Earlier, government showed that NPL was 9 percent. It was not actual data,” he added.
He, however, said a new law titled ‘Bank Resolution Act’ is being formulated to allow the Bangladesh Bank to legally apply corrective measures like mergers and acquisitions, liquidation, re-capitalisation and consolidation of the crisis-ridden banks.
“Under the act, it will be possible to take policy decisions for merger, acquisition, liquidation or recapitalisation of any bank,” he added.
