According to central bank figures, the amount constitutes 34 percent of the total liquidity of Tk 27,500 crore at the end of October.

"The commercial banks will have to find new business to utilise the fund" It offers a major challenge for the future," Bangladesh Bank Governor Fakhruddin Ahmed told the news agency in an interview.

He said the banks were facing stiff competition as all of them were running after big businesses, offering interest rates even as low as 9 percent.

The governor expressed dissatisfaction at the slow-moving reduction of the average interest rates that shed only by 2.5 percent in the last two years.

He, however, expected to see that the interest rates come down ultimately at a market set level by virtue of the competition for big businesses and the un-invested idle money.

Bangladesh Bank had set a target to encourage commercial banks to bring down the interest rates on loans to single digit by the year-end.

It introduced some indirect instruments like reduction of statutory liquidity requirement and cash reserve requirements by commercial banks to help them overcome liquidity crisis.

Ahmed suggested the bankers to make way for the small and medium businesses and the lower and middle-income groups by reducing the interest rates further so that they could have access to bank financing.