Hasina hopes banks will slash lending rates to maximum 9%

The banks will deliver on their promise and implement single-digit lending rates of maximum 9 percent from Apr 1 to boost industrialisation by allowing more investment, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hopes.

She discussed the issue when a delegation of the Bangladesh Association of Banks or BAB, an organisation of owners of private commercial banks, met her at the Ganabhaban on Monday.

The association handed a Tk 2.25 billion cheque to the prime minister as donation for the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Memorial Trust on the occasion of his birth centenary celebrations.

Hasina told the bank owners they had not lived up to their words to bring down lending rates even after the government fulfilled their demands.

The prime minister said she believed she “needed not remind them of what they had promised”.

“I hope the single-digit interest rates will be implemented. Otherwise, there will not be much investment as expected,” she said.

BAB President Nazrul Islam led the delegation. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal was also present among others.

The banks had been scheduled to implement new lending rate ceiling for the manufacturing sector at 9 percent and deposit interest rate ceiling at 6 percent from the first day of the year.

But Kamal, after a meeting with BAB representatives later, said they were given until Apr 1 so that some of both short-term and long-term deposits with more than 6 percent interests can mature.