Rupali Bank's Recovery From Its Top 20 Defaulters Collapses to Tk4 Crore, Down From Tk361 Crore a Year Ago

Rupali Bank's 20 largest defaulters owe the state-run lender Tk9,859 crore, nearly half of its entire Tk19,804.59 crore pile of non-performing loans as of June 2026, according to data reported by The Business Standard. What stands out is not just the concentration, it is how badly collection has deteriorated. The bank recovered just Tk4.03 crore from these 20 borrowers in the first half of 2026, down from Tk361 crore across all of 2025 and Tk45.70 crore in 2024.

• Rupali Bank's non-performing loans reached Tk19,804.59 crore, or 37.98 percent of its Tk47,906 crore loan book, as of June 2026.
• Its top 20 defaulters alone owe Tk9,859 crore, but recovery from them collapsed to Tk4.03 crore in H1 2026, versus Tk361 crore for all of 2025.
• The bank posted a net loss of Tk397 crore in H1 2026 and faces a capital shortfall of Tk18,026 crore before regulatory forbearance.
• Named defaulters include Beximco Group (Tk994 crore), Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation (Tk908 crore) and Crony Group (Tk872 crore).

A recovery effort that nearly stopped

The headline comparison is stark on its own. Tk361 crore recovered from Rupali's top 20 defaulters in all of 2025 fell to just Tk4.03 crore in the first six months of 2026, a collapse of more than 98 percent even before annualising the 2026 figure. Much of 2025's recovery came from one borrower: a steel company's Tk242 crore payment to exit its loan accounted for a large share of that year's total, according to a bank official cited by The Daily Star. Without a similarly large one-off payment in 2026, the underlying collection machinery looks far weaker than the 2025 number suggested.

Who owes what

Rupali's list of top defaulters reads like a cross-section of troubled industrial Bangladesh, textiles, sugar, construction, and conglomerates that have appeared in other banks' bad-loan disclosures too. Some names, including Bashundhara Paper Mill, Universal Medical College Hospital, Benitex Industries and Jute Textile Mills (Khulna), have since exited default status through rescheduling between April and May, which the bank has reported to Bangladesh Bank.

Borrower	Outstanding default (Tk crore)
Beximco Group	994
Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation	908
Crony Group	872
Jute Textile Mills (Khulna)	724
Noorjahan Group	630
HS Composite	620
Madaripur Spinning Mills	618
Badar Spinning Mills (Blue Planet Group)	604

Rupali is not the worst off, and that is the worrying part

A separate review of top-20 defaulters across six state banks, reported by The Daily Star, found Tk92,627 crore owed in total, about 63 percent of all defaulted loans at those banks, with only Tk562 crore recovered, roughly 0.6 percent. Janata Bank carried the heaviest load by far, with its top 20 owing Tk58,642 crore at a 70 percent default rate, against Rupali's Tk8,774 crore and 38 percent default rate at that time. Measured against its peers, Rupali has actually been one of the more functional recoverers historically, which makes the collapse to Tk4.03 crore in 2026 more notable, not less: if the comparatively better-performing state bank's recovery effort can fall apart this fast, the sector-wide numbers may be even shakier than the aggregate suggests.

Nazma Mobarek, secretary of the Financial Institutions Division, called the state banks' overall recovery record "highly disappointing."

A Rupali Bank official, explaining the difficulty of collecting from certain defaulters, asked: "How can we recover such sums from them when they are not in the country?"

The balance sheet strain behind the headline

The bad loans are not an isolated problem sitting apart from the rest of Rupali's finances. The bank posted an operating loss of Tk233 crore and a net loss of Tk397 crore through June 2026, while facing a capital shortfall of Tk18,026 crore, or Tk5,232 crore after regulatory forbearance is applied. It wrote off Tk490 crore in bad loans in H1 2026 alone, close to the Tk518 crore and Tk494 crore written off in full years 2024 and 2025 respectively. Some 2,596 cases involving Tk12,664 crore remain tied up in Artha Rin Adalats, the specialised courts that handle loan recovery suits, a backlog that limits how quickly legal pressure can convert into actual cash. Deposits stood at Tk72,636 crore against a loan-to-deposit ratio of 70.43 percent, figures that show the bank still has a functioning deposit base even as its lending book deteriorates.

National Professor Mahbub Ullah has noted that non-performing loans across Bangladesh's banking sector now exceed 32 percent of total loans, a figure that puts Rupali's 37.98 percent ratio above the sector average rather than in line with it. Market participants told The Business Standard that the losses and capital shortfall are weighing on investor confidence and the bank's share price.

What it means for you

Depositors at Rupali Bank are not at immediate risk; the bank's deposit base remains substantial and state-owned banks in Bangladesh have historically been supported through capital injections rather than allowed to fail outright. But the numbers are a reminder that not all banks carry equal risk, and savers comparing fixed deposit rates across banks may want to weigh a bank's published asset quality alongside the rate on offer, which can be done using the FDR rate comparison tool. For taxpayers, recurring capital injections into weak state banks are ultimately funded through the budget, making bad-loan concentration at banks like Rupali a public finance issue as much as a banking one.

What comes next

Rupali Bank's full-year 2026 recovery target from all non-performing loans, not just the top 20, stands at Tk2,300 crore, against Tk330 crore recovered in the first half and a 2025 full-year figure of Tk1,274 crore. Hitting that target in the second half would require a sharp turnaround from the near-standstill seen in H1, or another large one-off settlement similar to 2025's steel company payment. Investors and depositors will be watching whether the bank's next quarterly disclosure shows any movement on the Tk12,664 crore tied up in pending court cases, since that backlog remains the single largest lever available for converting paper defaults into actual recovered cash.