State-owned commercial banks are struggling to get new business in a market that is becoming increasingly competitive, data from Bangladesh Bank shows.

The advance-to-deposit ratio (ADR), which compares all loans to all deposits, of Agrani, BASIC, BDBL, Janata, Rupali and Sonali banks, has gone down below 52 percent indicating that these banks will not be able to earn as much as they could.

By contrast, the average ADR of 39 private commercial banks stood at over 76 percent on August 27, while it is nearly 60 percent for nine foreign banks and over 80 percent for Islamic banks, data shows.

The gap between deposit and credit growth of these six banks has also widened and crossed over 10 percentage points on August 27.

Deposit grew by 14.55 percent and credit by only 4.48 percent year-on-year in August.

“We are not getting good clients who prefer quality services provided by the private and foreign banks,” said a senior official of Sonali.

Sonali's loan growth has almost stalled at 0.46 percent against the industry's (56 banks) average growth of 11.62 percent.

“We have a difficult time persuading potential customers to get loans from us,” said an official of Sonali's corporate branch in Motijheel.

Although the situation of Agrani, Janata and Rupali is better than Sonali, they are also struggling to make business.

Agrani's credit grew by 7.73 percent and deposit by 20.63 percent. Janata's credit growth was 9.41 percent against deposit growth of over 14 percent.

Rupali looks different among these six banks as its credit growth -- 20 percent -- was higher than deposit growth -- 13 percent.

On the other hand, troubled BASIC Bank has witnessed over 18 percent negative credit growth.

Also, the bank's deposits grew by less than 1 percent.

“Overall investment is yet to pick up. When the implementation of mega projects will get momentum, demand for credit will go up,” said Zaid Bakht, chairman of Agrani Bank.

State banks have some disadvantages compared to private banks that can grab customers from state banks by offering low rates, he said.

“State banks cannot cut lending rates to the level of private banks as their nonperforming loans are higher,” said Bakht, also an economist.

On Agrani's higher deposit growth than credit, Bakht said they are trying to get low-cost deposit instead of high-cost fixed deposits.