The main opposition Jatiya Party lawmaker Anisul Islam Mahmud on Tuesday (February 13, 2024) demanded the government of Bangladesh put an end to the loan default culture to save the country’s economy.

“In this situation, we need to stop the culture of wilful loan default,” he said.

Anisul Islam, a veteran parliamentarian and the deputy leader of the opposition, placed the demand in the House, taking the floor on a point of order.

Citing a newspaper story, he said the banking sector's defaulted loans soared by over 20 percent to Tk 145,633 crore in 2023 as both governance and accountability continue to get looser.

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“Whenever this issue is being discussed, we are told that Bangladesh Bank and other banks are taking measures to reduce this (defaulted loans). But we never see that defaulted loans are declining, rather it is going higher,” he said.

The Jatiya Party MP said the amount of defaulted loans was Tk 28,000 crore as of 2008. The number of defaulted loans has increased to Tk 1.45 lac crore since 2008 to as of today which is very alarming.

He said there is a cash crisis and a dollar crisis in the banking sector. Some strong measures have been taken to tackle this situation.

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Anisul said Bangladesh Bank (BB) is telling that they want to reduce the amount of defaulted loans from existing nine percent to eight percent of total outstanding loans.  

“But their (BB) track record says that they will not do so,” he continued.

The opposition lawmaker requested the Finance Minister to give importance to stopping the loan default culture.

“The issue of loan default culture has been discussed in parliament so many times. But nothing has happened,” he added.

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