Janata Bank carries bulk of state banks’ bad loans

Janata Bank had the highest amount of non-performing loans among the country’s six state-owned banks, Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury said yesterday.

The bank accounted for more than half of the Tk 147,776 crore in non-performing loans held by Agrani Bank, Bangladesh Development Bank, BASIC Bank, Janata Bank, Rupali Bank and Sonali Bank as of June 30, he said while replying to a query from MP Abdul Alim during the question-and-answer session in parliament.

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Officials of Janata Bank told The Daily Star, seeking anonymity, that a major portion of the bank’s Tk 75,396.67 crore in bad loans is concentrated among a small number of powerful business groups.

About 80 percent of its bad loans are stuck with its top 20 defaulters, including Beximco, S Alam and AnonTex, they said.

Beximco Group alone accounted for about Tk 25,000 crore of the bank’s exposure. Other major defaulters include Crescent Group, Thermex Group and S Alam Group.

Replying to another query from Lutfor Rahman MP, Amir Khosru said the government usually takes necessary steps in accordance with the rules after receiving applications to set up new banks.

Between 2010 and June 2024, 13 private banks were allowed to operate, he said.

There are currently 62 public and private banks in the country, of which seven are public banks, said the minister.

At the end of June, bad loans in the banking sector stood at Tk 6,06,555 crore, accounting for 32.78 percent of total disbursed loans, according to the latest data from Bangladesh Bank.

Defaulted loans increased by Tk 17,851 crore in the three months to June, with the bad-loan ratio standing at 32.26 percent at the end of March.

Earlier, defaulted loans in the banking sector stood at Tk 6.44 lakh crore, or nearly 36 percent of disbursed loans, at the end of September 2025.

After the fall of the Awami League-led government in August 2024, bad loans in the banking sector jumped sharply as businesses affiliated with the previous government, including S Alam Group, Nassa Group, Beximco and Sikder Group, defaulted heavily.

The fragile state of the banking sector was reflected in December 2024, when bad loans jumped to Tk 3,45,764 crore from Tk 2,11,391 crore six months earlier, Bangladesh Bank data showed.