Banks disbursed only 42.22 per cent loans in the last two and a half years from a Tk 200 crore refinancing scheme of the Bangladesh Bank for the renewable energy and clean water projects.
BB officials said banks had borrowed only Tk 84.44 crore from the central bank’s revolving fund as they found the interest rate set by the BB ‘not lucrative enough’.
The BB launched the scheme in August 2009 in a bid to attract green and environment-friendly projects like solar home systems, bio-gas plants and industrial effluent treatment plants and the scheme activated on March 14, 2010.
A BB official told New Age on Thursday that the BB had already sought planning from the banks to disburse the remaining loans of the project in next six months.
The banks will place their planning in one or two days in this regard, he said.
He said, ‘We expect that they will take proper measures to disburse the loan in the period.’
Under the BB refinance scheme, banks and financial institutions can get loans at five per cent interest from the central bank and can charge a maximum 10 per cent interest on the loans given directly to their customers for implementing green energy and clean water projects.
But if a bank or a non-bank financial institution provides the loans through non-government organisations for installation of solar home systems, it can charge up to 12 per cent interest.
Another BB official said the central bank had so far signed participation agreements with 27 banks and one non-bank financial institution to disburse the above mentioned loan.
But only13 banks — Trust Bank, Mutual Trust Bank, Prime Bank, AB Bank, ONE Bank, Southeast Bank, Sonali Bank, Standard Bank, Commercial Bank of Ceylon, National Bank, Eastern Bank, Mercantile Bank and Uttara Bank — have disbursed loans under the scheme, he said.
‘The commercial banks are reluctant to disburse the loans as they claim that the 10 per cent interest rate set by BB is too low. They are charging 15 to 17 per cent interest on industrial term loans and 18 to 20 per cent on loans for small and medium enterprises,’ said the official.
He said prevailing liquidity crisis in the banking sector has also affected the refinance scheme for the last few months.
‘A bank has to first give funds to its client from its own source and then claim more funds from the central bank. Many of the banks are not interested to give loans from their own source because of the liquidity crisis,’ he said.