Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet PSU bankers to discuss stake sale plans and the problem of rising bad loans which have crossed a staggering Rs2.5 lakh crore.
“Banks are coming to meet me. Some of the banks are meeting me with regard to some immediate issues” this week, he told PTI in an interview. He was replying to a question on how the Government is planning to deal with the rising NPAs in the banking sector.
“NPAs is an area of concern. You see the private sector investment and the private sector performance has to pick up (that would ease pressure with regard to bad loans),” he said.
As per an RBI data, gross NPAs of PSU banks have gone up to Rs2,60,531 crore as on December, 2014. The top 30 defaulters are sitting on bad loans of Rs95,122 crore, which is more than one-third of the entire non-performing assets of public sector banks. In terms of percentage, it amounts to 36.50 per cent.
The Govt, he said, has already allowed banks to lower Govt stake to 52 pc, which would enable them to raise capital from markets. SBI and a few other public sector lenders are expected to raise funds of over Rs16,000 cr from the market to meet their capital requirement.