2024-07-25 12:37:04
Rupali Bank’s defaulted loans are increasing. At the end of the recently concluded financial year 2023-2024, the defaulted loan status of the bank stood at 8889 crore 36 lakh taka. The rate of defaulted loans is 18.15 percent.
According to sources, the previous year i.e. at the end of June 2023, the status of defaulted loans in Rupali Bank was 8 thousand 57 crore 91 lakhs. At that time, the percentage of defaulted loans was 17.53 percent. In the last one year, defaulted loans in the bank have increased by Tk 831 crore 45 lakh.
It has been predicted by the bank that the status of defaulted loans of Rupali Bank may increase in the next two financial years including the current financial year 2024-2025. According to the bank’s advance forecast or projection, the defaulted loan status of the bank at the end of the current financial year will be Tk 10 thousand crores, at the end of 2025-2026 financial year it will be Tk 10 thousand 500 crores and it may increase to Tk 11 thousand crores in the financial year 2026-2027.
It is known that at the end of the last fiscal year or at the end of last June, the level of unsecured loans in the bank stood at 566 crore 76 lakh taka. The previous year i.e. at the end of June 2023, the outstanding loan balance in the bank was Tk 575 crore 67 lakh. Accordingly, the bank’s non-performing loan status has decreased slightly in the last one year. According to the bank’s own account, Tk. 11 crore 32 lakhs has been recovered from foreclosed loans during the financial year ended.
According to sources in the Financial Institutions Department of the Ministry of Finance, the target was to bring down the defaulted loan status of Rupali Bank to Tk 9,000 crore in the financial year 2023-2024 concluded under the Annual Performance Agreement (APA) and the target to recover the defaulted loan was Tk 450 crore. On the contrary, the bank was able to recover only 272 crores 49 lakhs of defaulted loans.
On this side, Rupali Bank’s APA report for the third quarter (March 2024) shows that at the end of last March, the amount of recovery of defaulted loans was Tk 98 crore 48 lakh and the amount of recovery from foreclosed loans was Tk 87 lakh.
According to the information signed by the managing director and chief executive officer of Rupali Bank, currently their biggest problem and challenge is to collect capital according to Basel-3 guidelines of Bangladesh Bank and to save proper provision by reducing the amount of classified loans of the bank. Besides, bringing the bank under better technical infrastructure to deal with hacking and other technical risks and providing training to the officers.
At present Rupali Bank has 24 loss making branches. The bank has set a target of reducing the number of loss-making branches by two to 22 by the end of the current financial year. Besides, the bank has set a target of Tk 350 crore in cash from classified loans and Tk 10 crore from foreclosed loans in the current financial year.