Dhaka, Nov. 30 -- Bangladesh's banking sector will require five to ten years to recover from the deepening non-performing loan (NPL) crisis, Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur said Saturday.
Speaking at an economic conference organised by Bonik Barta at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Dhaka, the governor said the sector is now seeing the true extent of bad loans due to the central bank's stricter loan classification rules.
Mansur said that although official figures for years suggested that NPLs hovered around 8 percent, independent analyses revealed a far more alarming scenario.
"Two years ago, my estimate was that the sector's NPL ratio would be around 25 percent.
But the latest figures show it has already reached 35 percent, and it cou...