DuSai Resort put up for sale to recover loans

IFIC Bank has moved to auction the DuSai Resort & Spa, a high-end hotel located in Moulvibazar for its failure to repay more than Tk 87.56 crore in loans.

"We have resorted to the legal process as DuSai became a loan defaulter in December last year," said Shah Md Moinuddin, deputy managing director of IFIC Bank.

Accordingly, the bank through an advertisement on June 5 announced that it would hold the auction for the mortgaged property on June 27.

However, M Nasser Rahman, the owner of the resort, and son of former finance minister M Saifur Rahman, received a stay order against the auction yesterday.

The auction was part of a case filed with the money loan court against the defaulter, Moinuddin added.

In 2011, the owner of DuSai took Tk 40 crore in loans to set up the resort at a cost of Tk 70 crore. The remaining Tk 30 crore came from the owner.

But because of the failure to pay the installments on time, the outstanding debt has more than doubled in the last six years.

Rahman, also the chairman and managing director of the resort, confirmed to The Daily Star about the court's stay order.

"We are trying to bring in foreign investment and we hope we can repay the loan in September," he said.

The former lawmaker said he could not pay the installment regularly as the resort was not making expected profit.

He said the resort was set up as per international standard in order to attract foreign tourists, but it has failed to woo the targeted customers because of the political unrest since its opening in 2014.

Average occupancy at the 85-room DuSai is only 25 percent, according to Rahman.

He said the resort is in talks with foreign investors and IFIC Bank knew about it. But the Bangladesh Bank has forced the bank to announce the auction and the government is behind it, he claimed.

In December last year, an inspection team of the BB classified the loan account of DuSai as bad, according to a source at IFIC Bank.

Rahman admitted: "It was a wrong decision to set up such a high-end resort because there is not enough customers in the country who can afford to stay there." 

Room rent stands at Tk 8,000 to Tk 48,000 per night, according to the hotel.

Rahman said he planned for the resort in 2010 when the tourism sector was booming. 

The resort has been built on 1,386 decimals of land and it was the first five-star resort in the country that received three international awards for its architectural and interior designs, according to its website.

The World Luxury Hotel Awards committee of South Africa named DuSai as the "Best Luxury Forest Resort" in Asia for 2016 and the Luxury Hotel Guide of the UK, another worldwide hotel and resort accreditation body, declared it as the "Best Luxury Resort" in Bangladesh.