Bangladesh Bank has told all scheduled banks to form special cells for monitoring clients who have defaulted loans above Tk 1 billion in a bid to bring down the volume of bad loans in the sector.
It issued a circular on Monday (Jul 22) with immediate effect to the top bank officials.
Deputy managing director of the respective banks will lead the special monitoring cell, according to the circular.
The circular said the progress of recovery of classified loans in the quarterly statement named “Quarterly statement of classified loans amounting BDT 100 crore [Tk 1 billion] & above” should be conveyed to the board of directors.
The information should be sent to the Bangladesh Bank’s Banking Regulations and Policy Department Task Force cell.
In March this year, the central bank started working to strictly monitor the top defaulter companies in the banking sector.
Recently, the bank sent a letter to different banks asking for more suggestions about the types of measures taken against top defaulters with defaulted loans above Tk 1 billion.
According to the BB latest data, the non-performing loans (NPLs) of banks rose by a staggering Tk 169.62 billion in a period of three months till March this year, increasing the amount of stress loan in the banking sector to nearly Tk 1.11 trillion, the largest ever in the country's history.
The bad loan amount was 11.87 percent of total disbursed loans in the given month, according to the latest Bangladesh Bank (BB) data.