Dhaka, May 28 -- The growing default loans in Bangladesh's banks have swelled further, by 16 percent in a year to stand at over Tk 1.31 trillion at the end of March.

In the January-March period, bad debts worth around Tk 110 billion were added to the total, which was 9 percent more than the previous quarter, latest data from the Bangladesh Bank showed on Sunday.

The total default loans were 8.80 percent of the nearly Tk 15 trillion loans disbursed by the banks, up from 8.43 percent a year ago.

Sarwar Hossain, a spokesman for the central bank, said the default loans grew because it found more bad debts during inspections after December while interests on the old default loans were added to the total.

Although the Bangladesh Bank gave b...