Total default loans Tk 63, 435cr: Muhith

The total amount of default loans in banks and financial institutions is Tk 63,435 crore, Finance Minister AMA Muhith told the parliament today.

Replying to a lawmaker’s query, Muhith informed the House that as many as 2,13,532 borrowers collectively owe the default loan amount to the banks and financial institutions.

In a written statement, Muhith also said a separate taskforce cell of Bangladesh Bank monitors and supervises the default loans and the cell regularly supervises cases filed with the Ortho Rin Adalat [Money Loan Court] and other courts.

Pointing to Bangladesh Bank statistics, the finance minister said total amount of default loans of banks now stand at Tk 58,877 crore and of financial institutions stand at Tk 4,558 crore.

Banks wrote off bad debt of Tk 34,438 crore while financial institutions wrote off loan of Tk 32 crore, Muhith also added.

In replying to another query, Muhith said a legal procedure in the Philippines and a tripartite discussion among Bangladesh Bank, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and SWIFT, the global financial messaging system, are going on for recovering the heist money from Bangladesh Bank reserve.   

Over one year after the international cyber hackers had stolen the money, so far USD 34.53 million was recovered out of total USD 101 million stolen from Bangladesh Bank, Muhith said.

International cyber hackers had stolen the money on February 5, 2016, when they managed to get the money out of the Bangladesh Bank’s sovereign account maintained with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Some USD 20 million went to Sri Lanka, where it was blocked by authorities.

The rest entered accounts seemingly set up to anticipate the transfers at the RCBC Bank in Philippines.