The rate was 3.90 in cash recovery from the other defaulters.

The information came up at a meeting between Bangladesh Bank (BB) and the NCBs to review the latter's performance in the last six months in achieving the targets they set in their memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Earlier this year, four NCBs--Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali Bank--had committed themselves to recovering Tk 232 crore from their top 20 defaulters in the first half of the year while they have managed to recover only Tk 8.40 crore.

The central bank Governor Salehuddin Ahmed, who presided over yesterday's meeting, expressed discontent over the poor performance of the NCBs, said meeting sources.

Officials of the NCBs, on the other hand, spoke about their helplessness in the face of the defaulters' persistent non-compliance with the bank instructions.

BB officials suggested that the NCBs take the opportunity in the build-up to the upcoming general election when the defaulters must reschedule their loans if they are to contest the polls.

The banks should step up their efforts to recover default loans before the election slated for January 2007, they observed.

The central bank officials also instructed the NCBs to strictly oversee the rescheduling of loan payments so that no defaulter could gain undue interest waivers.

NCB officials, however, were somewhat downbeat as they noted that the number of prospective candidates is very low among the defaulters of their banks.

They argued that they have already had a huge sum of money owed to the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the amount is only rising.

Sonali Bank officials said that half of their loans are with the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC).

NCB officials urged the BB to take measures to stem the trends.

Sonali Bank had a recovery target of Tk 154 crore, whereas it recovered only Tk 30 lakh. Janata Bank recovered only Tk 10 lakh against a target of Tk 25 crore, Agrani Bank Tk 5 crore against Tk 18 crore and Rupali Bank Tk 3 crore against Tk 35 crore.

These banks have recovered Tk 25 crore in other classified loans against a target of Tk 860 crore. Of this, Sonali Bank recovered Tk 10 crore against a target of Tk 400 crore, Janata Tk 5 crore against Tk 150 crore, Agrani Tk 9 crore against Tk 250 crore and Rupali Tk 1 crore against a target of Tk 60 crore.

With 9.88 percent credit growth, Agrani Bank has already crossed the limit in the last six months while the credit growth of Sonali Bank was 1.13 percent, Janata Bank 2.96 percent and Rupali Bank 1.75 percent.

Meeting sources said that the NCBs also failed to meet other targets of their MoUs such as reduction in operation expenses, capital shortfall and the amount of classified loans.

Among the four NCBs, three were able to meet their goal of not allowing their credit growth to exceed 5 percent mark in a year.