<div><b><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The average loan amount of each family in Bangladesh was Tk 70,506 in 2022, up from Tk 37,743 in 2016, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data shared recently.</span><br></b></div><div><br></div><div>One-third of households in Bangladesh are now in debt. This information has emerged in the latest household income-expenditure survey of BBS.</div><div><br></div><div>According to the survey, 37 percent of the country’s households have taken loans or borrowed money last year.</div><div><br></div><div>During the survey – from January to December last year, an average of 37.03 percent of households reported taking loans or borrowing money. In the 2016 survey, 29.70 percent of the households were borrowing.</div><div><br></div><div>As such, in 6 years, the borrowing of families in the country has increased by more than 7 percent.</div><div><br></div><div>Last Wednesday, BBS published the preliminary results of Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2022.</div><div><br></div><div>MORE RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN DEBT THAN IN CITIES</div><div><br></div><div>According to the BBS survey, more households in the villages are in debt than in cities.</div><div><br></div><div>In rural areas, an average of 39.35 percent of families are in debt. In urban areas, this percentage is 32.11.</div><div><br></div><div>In 2016, the average household debt in urban areas was 22.10 percent. And in rural areas that percentage was 32.70.</div><div><br></div><div>In 2022, the number of households in debt increased by an average of 10 percent in urban areas, and by 6.5 percentage in rural areas, the BBS survey stated. - UNB</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>