After a periodic lull, the state owned Sonali Bank (SB) has resumed its full credit operation with a cautious loan disbursement target of Taka 80 billion by next June thanks to its robust growth in deposits and impressive loan recovery.

Talking to BSS, Pradip Chandra Datta, Managing Director and CEO of Sonali Bank said his bank now stands on a strong financial footing due to robust deposit growth and a record recovery of classified loans mostly in cash from a few big defaulters during the last six months.

The bank’s deposit jumped from Tk 543.95 billion to 633.95 billion during the last fiscal and continues to rising when it recovered a record of nearly Tk 29 billion outstanding loan mostly in cash during the last eight months. This enabled the bank to start taking an intensive loan disbursement plan for financing projects, he said.

“We have formulated a cautious new credit policy to disburse nearly Tk 80 billion to real entrepreneurs with 100 per cent recovery target. We have given instructions to all of our branches to choose real entrepreneurs and potential projects very cautiously in line with our new policy and disburse loans quickly”, he said.

Of the total loans, officials said nearly Tk 800 crore would be invested in small and medium industries where the bank had a recovery success of more than 90 per cent and Tk 770 crore has been allocated for loans to agricultural sector.

The bank is under pressure to reduce interest expense that shot up to Tk 3.20 billion on June 30, 2013. The bank’s interest expense jumped by Tk 3.10 billion and increase interest income dropped by 1.54 billion as on June 30, 2013, according to a Soanli Bank statement made on provisional figures.

Sonali Bank, the largest commercial bank in the country, became the discussion of the table in 2012 due to some big loan scams that swindled nearly Tk 40 billion crore from its exchequer specially in a time when it was suffering from the overburden of mounting classified loan of Tk 20 billion.

News:The Daily Sun/13-Oet-2013