Dhaka, Dec. 7 -- Commercial banks in Bangladesh are now given a cutoff time until end of this month to significantly downsize mounting non-performing loans to clean up their year-end balance sheets.

Spelling out this direction at a meeting with bankers Sunday, the central bank high-ups suggested top executives of the banks to go by all the instructions the banking regulator recently issued regarding the policy support for the revival of the ailing businesses and partial write-off facility to cleanse the banks' balance sheets.

The Bangladesh Bank top management led by its governor Dr Ahsan H. Mansur made the instructions at the bankers' meeting with the top executives of the country's commercial banks at the BB headquarters.

The FE corr...