Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) – The central bank of Bangladesh has asked the Sonali Bank Limited for taking necessary measures to improve their financial health through reducing the amount of classified loans.
The amount of classified loans of Sonali Bank rose to BDT 87.50 billion in September last from BDT 70.16 billion as of June 30 last year.
The instruction came at a meeting with the top management of the state-owned Sonali Bank Limited on Thursday to review its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Atiur Rahman in the chair.
Expressing dissatisfaction, the BB asked the Sonali Bank in the meeting to take necessary measures for improving their treasury management to avoid any liquidity shortage in future.
Excepting the area of operational costs, the Sonali Bank could not achieve any target in other areas, including liquidity position, credit growth, and cost of fund in line with the existing MoU, according to the BB officials.
The central bank earlier signed the MoU with the management of the SCB to improve their financial performance by providing policy support.
The SCB was also asked to improve their human resources and go for the latest information technology to provide better services to their clients.
The central bankers also said the BB also asked the Sonali Bank to settle the inland bill purchase (IBP) concerning the Hall-Mark loan scam immediately.
The Sonali Bank was also asked to take effective measures for improving internal control for the sake of checking fraudulence and forgeries in future, the BB official added.
When it came to the issue of default loans, the BB asked the SCB to gear up their drive for recovery of such loans through strengthening their recovery cells.
The percentage of default loans of the Sonali Bank rose to 26.55 pe cent in September last from 21.59 per cent as of June 30, 2012, according to the central bank statistics.
However, the average percentage of the banking sector’s default loans stood at 8.75 per cent in September last, up from 7.17 percent as of June 30, 2012, the BB data showed.
The largest SCB of the country was asked to take effective measures concerning non-performing loans (NPLs), particularly against the top 20 defaulters, to improve their financial health, the BB officials said.
BBN/SSR/AD-04Jan13-8:07 pm (BST)
