Recovery of defaulted loans at the state-owned Sonali Bank declined by 58.14 per cent in the first half of 2014 compared with that of the same period a year ago as the bank failed to recover the non-performing loans from its top defaulters.
According to the latest Sonali Bank data, the bank recovered defaulted loans of Tk 879.48 crore in January-June of this year as against Tk 2,100.90 crore during the same period of 2013.
Sonali Bank managing director and chief executive officer Pradip Kumar Dutta, however, claimed that his bank had played role good enough in recovering the defaulted loans in the last one and half years.
The bank failed to recover the defaulted loans in accordance with the bank’s target as some big defaulters did not repay their loans in due time, he said at a news conference at the Sonali Bank headquarters in the capital on Tuesday.
The Sonali Bank data showed that recovery of defaulted loans from the top 20 defaulters had also declined by 32.07 per cent in the first six months of 2014 compared with that of the corresponding period of 2013.
Sonali Bank recovered defaulted loans of Tk 154.30 crore from the top 20 defaulters in the first six months of 2014 as against Tk 227.16 crore during the same period of 2013.
The defaulted loans at Sonali Bank stood at 10,560 crore as of June 2014 from Tk 12,471 crore as of June 2013.
The credit disbursement of Sonali Bank also declined by 8.80 per cent to Tk 33,534.40 crore as of June 30, 2014 from Tk 36,771.10 crore as of June 30, 2013.
Pradip said the credit disbursement by Sonali Bank had declined as the businesspeople had earlier adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach to expand their business by taking loans from the banks.
He, however, hoped that the credit disbursement by his bank would increase in the second half of this year as the political situation had recently developed.
Besides, Sonali Bank set a target of loan disbursement for its all branches which would speed up its credit programme, Pradip said.
Due to lower loan disbursement, the deposit of Sonali Bank increased by 9.96 per cent to Tk 69,707.90 crore as of June 2014 from Tk 63,395 crore as of June, 2013.
The export through Sonali Bank also declined by 0.69 per cent to Tk 3,253.55 crore in the first half of 2014 from Tk 3,276.14 crore during the same period of 2013.
Pradip claimed that foreign exchange-related business of Sonali Bank had recently increased as the import through his bank increased significantly in the first half of 2014.
He said that the bank had gained the highest operating profit among the state-owned commercial banks in the first six months of 2014.
The operating profit of Sonali Bank stood at Tk 533.54 crore in January-June of 2014 as against Tk 186.56 crore during the same period a year ago.
-With New Age input
