Bad loans of the state-owned banks are likely to go up further to 10.1 per cent by the end of the current fiscal, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said while quoting an RBI report.
In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, the Minister said RBI’s Financial Stability Report had said that ‘under the baseline scenario, the GNPA (Gross Non-Performing Assets) ratio for public sector banks may go up to 10.1 per cent by March 2017’.
He attributed the rise in bad loans to a host of factors like domestic growth sluggishness in the recent past, slowdown in recovery in global economy and continuing uncertainty in global markets, leading to lower exports of various products like textiles, engineering goods, leather and gems. The other factors responsible for the rise in NPAs include ban on mining projects, delay in clearances affecting power, iron and steel sector, volatility in prices of raw material, shortage in availability of power and also aggressive lending by banks in the past.
GNPA jumped from 5.43 per cent (`2.67 lakh crore) in 2014-15 to 9.32 per cent (`4.76 lakh crore) in 2015-16, Gangwar said in a reply to another question. The Minister further said there were 701 NPA accounts above `100 crore amounting to `1.64 lakh crore in public sector banks as on December 2015. The RBI, he added, has also submitted a list of defaulters of above `500 crore to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover.