Defaulted loans in the country’s agriculture sector stood at Tk 6,006.80 crore as of September 30, 2014 which accounted for 20.04 per cent of the total loans disbursed (Tk 29,971.50 crore) in the sector. The farm sector defaulted loans accounted for 18.22 per cent of the total loans (Tk 34,632.82 crore) disbursed in the sector as of June 30, 2014, according to the latest Bangladesh Bank data. Defaulted loans in the agriculture sector were Tk 6,308.95 crore as of June 30, 2014.
A large number of farmers failed to repay their loans in the last financial year 2013-14 as they counted huge losses for failure in supplying their products to upazila and district headquarters and to the metropolitan cities due to frequent blockades and general strikes called by the opposition political parties in the period, a BB official told New Age on Thursday.
Besides, the BB’s relaxed rescheduling loan policy did not bring any boon for farmers as the defaulted loans in the agriculture sector increased significantly in the recent period, he said.
The loan defaulting trend in the agricultural sector increased while overall defaulted loans in the banking sector declined in the FY14 as the banks rescheduled their defaulted loans on wholesale basis by using the central bank’s relaxed loan rescheduling policy, the official said.
He said the banks had provided the influential businesspeople and political persons backed by the government with the central bank facility.
Against the backdrop, the central bank has moved to strengthen the drive for recovery of unpaid farm credits, the official said.
‘We have already given instructions to all banks to expedite both recovery and disbursement of the farm credits, he said.
The central bank has already held a number of meetings with top officials of the banks in this connection.
The official said the central bank had already strengthened its monitoring and supervision at field level to stop diverting loans particularly from farming to other purposes.
The BB expects that the amount of defaulted loans in the agriculture sector will decrease in the coming months due to the central bank initiatives, he said.
Bangladesh Krishi Bank held the largest amount of defaulted farm loans or 46.86 per cent amounting to Tk 2,815.19 crore in the banking sector as of September 30, 2014.
The BKB, however, disbursed the highest amount of farm loans of Tk 12,243.20 crore among the banks against the total distributed outstanding farm loans of Tk 29,971.50 crore as of September 30, 2014.
The BB data showed that as of September 30, 2014 the defaulted loans at Sonali Bank stood at Tk 1,126.92 crore, that of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank at Tk 1,410.41 crore, that of Agrani Bank at Tk 273.30 crore, that of Janata Bank at Tk 238.35 crore, and that of Rupali Bank at Tk 22.10 crore.
The agriculture sector defaulted loans in the private and foreign commercial banks increased by 74.57 per cent to Tk 120.53 crore as of September 30, 2014 from Tk 69.04 crore as of September 30, 2013.
Another BB official said that the state-run banks held larger amount of the agriculture defaulted loans than those of the PCBs and the FCBs as the state-run banks usually disbursed the majority of the agriculture loans in the banking sector.
The BB data showed that the overdue loans in the agriculture sector also increased in the period.
The overdue loans in the sector rose by 1.74 per cent in the last one year.
The overdue loans in the agriculture sector increased to Tk 7,698.65 crore as of September 30, 2014 from Tk 7,566.69 crore as of September 30, 2013.
BB officials said that the overdue loans would turn into defaulted loans if the banks failed to recover the loans in the quickest possible time.
-With New Age input
