The banking division has directed the managing directors of the state-owned banks (SoBs) and specilised banks to resolve audit objections and dispose off the pending cases through tri-partite meetings outside the Court.

Besides, it asked the banks to enhance their performance and reduce non-performing loans to meet requirement of international standards.

A total of 20,319 cases of the four major state-owned commercial banks-Sonali, Agrani , Janata and Rupali have remained pending blocking a total of Tk 115.40 billion, according to the Bangladesh Bank sources.

“Development of the state-owned banks mostly depends on quick disposal off pending disputes,” banking division secretary Shafiqur Rahman Patwari told daily sun after the meeting with managing directors of the state-owned commercial banks.

He also said that the government would take all kinds of measures regarding development of the 12 public banks.

“The next review meeting of the public banks will be held at banking division in September this year,” he added.

Managing director of four state-owned banks –Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali — and specialised banks such as Bangladesh Krishi Bank, BASIC Bank and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank, Ansar and VDP Bank , Bangladesh Development Bank Limited, Karmashagthan (employment) Bank, Probashi Kallyan Bank and also Bangladesh Housing Finance Corporation are scheduled to attend the meeting.

Recently Bangladesh Bank conducted a survey on four state owned commercial banks regarding pending cases at courts. As per the survey, 7,232 cases of Agrani Bank, the highest among all state-owned banks, pending total fund of Tk 37.62 billion.

Total 4,670 cases were pending with Sonali Bank blocking Tk 36.60 billion while 4,064 cases of Janata Bank involving Tk 26.23 billion and 4,335 cases of Rupali Bank blocking Tk 14.63 billion were pending.

The state-owned banks managed to recover only 2.3 1 percent default loan from their targeted top 20 defaulters during the first quarter of this calendar year, while the rate was 22 percent from other defaulters, said the sources.

Bangladesh Bank data shows that the state-owned banks recovered only Tk 84.3 million out of total Tk 365 million bad loans from top 20 defaulters in the first quarter this year.

But Rupali Bank could not recover any default loan during the period.

The three banks realised Tk 2.58 billion against a recovery target of Tk 11.90 billion from other defaulters during the period.

 News: Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ July-05-2011