Bangladesh Bank (BB) will allow rescheduling of loans without down-payment for apparel exports, especially stock-lots caused by non-shipment of goods or cancellation of export orders, BB Governor Dr Atiur Rahman said Sunday.

“Apparel exporters will enjoy loan rescheduling without down-payment if the non-repayment was genuinely caused from stock lots,” Dr Atiur Rahman told daily sun.

Besides, the regulator would also relax the rules on loan rescheduling considering the national priority on the basis of individual case study, the governor said.

The central bank last month asked the banks to enforce the new rules on classification, provisioning and rescheduling of term-loans with a provision of allowing maximum three-time rescheduling of a term-loan with effect from July 1.

The new rules had panicked the apparel exporters who pursued the central bank authority for not enforcing such tightened rules that reduced the time-limit by three-month for classification, provisioning and rescheduling.

According to new rules, non-repayment period against a term-loan for more than two months will be treated a specially mentioned account (SMA) and the non-repayment period between 3-6 months will be classified as substandard. If the non-repayment period is more than six months, it will be treated as default loan.

Atiur said the central bank inspectors will monitor the supervisory activities of banks regarding the loan classification, provisioning and rescheduling as per the new rules.

The governor also asked all the banks and financial institutions to strengthen respective supervisory strength in this regard.

He said banks must follow the provisioning of respective capital in accordance with the new rules.

“It was necessitated because of adopting internal best practices by banks so that the country’s banking sector become stable,” he said.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 16th July 2012