The average loan amount of each family in Bangladesh was Tk 70,506 in 2022, up from Tk 37,743 in 2016, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data shared recently.

One-third of households in Bangladesh are now in debt. This information has emerged in the latest household income-expenditure survey of BBS.

According to the survey, 37 percent of the country’s households have taken loans or borrowed money last year.

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During the survey – from January to December last year, an average of 37.03 percent of households reported taking loans or borrowing money. In the 2016 survey, 29.70 percent of the households were borrowing.

As such, in 6 years, the borrowing of families in the country has increased by more than 7 percent.

Last Wednesday, BBS published the preliminary results of Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2022.

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More rural households in debt than in cities

According to the BBS survey, more households in the villages are in debt than in cities.

In rural areas, an average of 39.35 percent of families are in debt. In urban areas, this percentage is 32.11.

In 2016, the average household debt in urban areas was 22.10 percent. And in rural areas that percentage was 32.70.

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In 2022, the number of households in debt increased by an average of 10 percent in urban areas, and by 6.5 percentage in rural areas, the BBS survey stated.