Bangladesh Bank (BB) started giving loans at 10 percent interest for publication of books of creativity and knowledge.

The central bank is disbursing the loan from its Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) fund through the scheduled banks.

Under this arrangement, Chandraboti Academy has already received loan from the Kakrail branch of AB Bank and a number of other publishing houses have applied for loans at Dilkusha branch of Prime Bank.

General Manager of BB M Masum Patwari told BSS that a publisher can get a loan of up to Taka 50 lakh. But the applicant would have to meet the criteria fixed by the scheduled banks.

The BB has no separate budget for the publication sector loan. Therefore, such loans would be disbursed from the SME fund, he added.