SoEs' debt to govt soars to Tk 665.5b

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S M Jahangir
The government's renewed move to streamline the process of debt servicing by the state-owned enterprises (SoEs) has yielded little result due to indifference of the latter, sources said.
The non-payment of large amount of arrear debts by the SoEs has put the government into difficulty in the matters of fiscal management, they said.
"Despite taking repeated measurers, most of the government agencies and autonomous bodies have been failing to service their outstanding debts properly," a senior finance ministry official told the FE.
Taking such poor repayment performance into consideration, the debt service liability (DSL) wing of the Finance Ministry has recently asked the SoEs to clear their outstanding debts to help the government in meeting its current expenditures, the official mentioned.
"You must clear your outstanding DSL shortly to help beef up the government's resources required for meeting its current expenditures," the wing told the agencies concerned.
To streamline the debt settlement process, the ministry recently published a DSL manual, in which details about the debt liabilities of the individual agencies have been furnished, official sources said.
According to the official figures, the total outstanding debt liabilities of the state-owned agencies exceeded Tk 665.53 billion with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) topping the defaulters' list.
Of the total amount, the agencies are liable to pay more than Tk 485.94 billion - nearly Tk 182.07 billion as principal amount and Tk 303.87 billion as interest - to the government.
The figures also showed that the concerned agencies have so far paid only Tk 63.28 billion, which is only 8.68 per cent of the total arrear debts, said an official source.
Among top ten defaulters, the Power Development Board owes over Tk 260 billion, followed by the Petrobangla -- Tk 65.34 billion, the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) Tk 47.93 billion, Rural Electrification Board (REB) Tk 11.82 billion and the Jamuna Multipurpose Bridge Authority (JMBA) Tk 1.17 billion, the official figures showed.
"We have initiated the process of realising the huge amount of debts from the agencies concerned after we found that non-payment of such dues had put the government in a difficult situation to manage its current expenditures," said an official.
Another official source, however, said the latest debt recovery drive came in line with the government's ongoing effort to boost its revenue collection, especially from the internal sources.
The official further said taking the prevailing poor debt recovery into account, the authorities are planning to sit with the relevant agencies either individually or collectively to devise their debt servicing procedures.