A major discrepancy has been found between what Home Minister Salauddin Ahmed told parliament about Islami Bank’s Rural Development Scheme (RDS) and the bank’s own financial reports. The minister claimed in parliament that 22,000 crore taka had been disbursed under the scheme and that a large part of it was untraceable. But the bank’s latest annual report shows the RDS’s total loan balance is less than a third of the minister’s figure.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, the home minister said: “The Rural Development Scheme (RDS) is a flagship project of Islami Bank. 22,000 crore taka has been disbursed through this scheme. Earlier 11,000 crore was given. After 5 August, another 11,000 crore was given to cross the electoral hurdle — money of which there is no trace.”
A review of Islami Bank’s 2025 annual report, however, shows the claim does not match the actual picture. According to the report, the RDS’s total loan balance stood at 6,789 crore taka at the end of 2025, against 6,712 crore a year earlier — an increase of just 77 crore taka, or 1.14 percent, in one year. The report also shows the bulk of disbursed loans is being recovered, with defaults very small: just 23 crore 28 lakh taka of the total is classified. The recovery rate in the scheme was 97.50 percent at the end of last year, against 98.49 percent at the end of 2024. Since the RDS began, loans have been provided under it to 1,775,000 families in 35,352 villages through last December, according to the report.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report