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Rupali too gives Beximco relief

Third state bank reschedules Tk 604cr loans

Rejaul Karim Byron
Taking its cue from Sonali and Janata, Rupali Bank has decided to reschedule Tk 604 crore loans to Beximco Ltd for 10 years.
Last month, Sonali Bank rescheduled Tk 982.44 crore loans to Beximco Group and Janata Bank Tk 1,849 crore Ioans to its five garment and textile units early this month.
The proposal for rescheduling the loans at an interest rate of 11 percent, much lower than the market rate of 13-14 percent, will come into effect after the central bank's approval.
Seeking anonymity, a Bangladesh Bank high-up said they would soon prepare a restructuring policy on large loans, and then review the Beximco Group's proposals.
At a meeting early this week, the BB Board discussed the matter and decided that large loans wouldn't be rescheduled or restructured on an ad hoc basis.
It is unusual in the banking sector that loans to a business entity are rescheduled by different banks at low interest rates for a long period.
In the past, Beximco Group's loans from various banks, including Sonali, Janata and Rupali, had been rescheduled several times.
According to central bank rules, there is no scope for rescheduling loans more than three times. Since Beximco Croup's loans were already rescheduled at least thrice, the conglomerate approached the BB in August to get the facility, said bank officials.
The Group lobbied high-ups of the BB as well as other banks to get the facility, they said.
In the last two decades, Beximco Group Vice Chairman Salman F Rahman, who is close to the current ruling party, found himself at the centre of controversies over share market scams and defaulted loans.
A number of bank officials and businesspersons said if this Group is given such a benefit, other business groups may demand similar facilities from banks.
The decision from Rupali came on Tuesday more than four months after Salman approached the central bank with a debt rescheduling plan of Tk 5,269 crore, mostly taken from seven banks including Janata and Sonali.
In a letter to the BB in August, Salman appealed to the BB to bail the company out of a liquidity crisis, prompting the regulator to forward the proposals to all seven banks that gave loans to the Group.
Sonali and Janata approved the conglomerate's loan rescheduling proposals without taking any down payment.
However, Rupali took Tk 11 crore as down payment and okayed the rescheduling proposal, said an official of the bank.
The amount included full repayment of Tk 4.60 crore that had been given as loans to Beximco Computer Ltd.
The Tk 604 crore loans to Beximco Ltd are to be rescheduled till June 30, 2024.
The rescheduling time would include a grace period of two years, meaning the Croup wouldn't pay any instalment from July 1, 2014 to June 30,2016.
However, the conglomerate would forfeit the rescheduling facility if it fails to pay two instalments consecutively. It has to repay the loans in 96 equal instalments.
Janata Bank rescheduled the loans to the Croup with an interest rate of 11 percent for 11 years. However, Sonali set the interest rate at 10 percent for it with a repayment period of 10 years.
Talking to The Daily Star, acting Rupali Bank chairman Amalendu Mukherjee said the Rupali Board approved the Group's rescheduling proposal, as it had given the bank collateral equivalent to the amount of loans.
The Board also considered the Group's contribution to the country's economy and employment generation, and similar decisions by other banks, he said.
In his letter to the central bank in August, Salman showed two reasons behind the Croup's liquidity crisis -politically motivated credit restrictions on the Group between 2001 and 2008, and repayment of Tk 800 crore in bank Ioans in the last three years.
"Because of politically motivated credit restrictions on the group from 2001 to 2008 as well as other forms of harassment in the past, the group has been facing insufficiency of working capital for some time," Salman told The Daily Star at that time.