State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) has declared a list of about 900 wilful defaulters including Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery, Zoom Developers and Nafed, which owe close to Rs11,000 crore to the lender.
The bank recently declared beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines and its guarantors UB Holdings and Vijay Mallya as a wilful defaulters. Kingfisher Airlines owes Rs1,500 crore to PNB.
The bank has declared 904 entities as wilful defaulters with outstanding loan of Rs10,869.71 crore at the end of December.
As per the list put out by PNB, some of the prominent defaulters include Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery which owes Rs900.37 crore, followed by Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds Rs747.98 crore, Zoom Developers Rs410.18 crore, Nafed Rs224.26 crore and S Kumar Nationwide Rs146.82 crore.
As part of its balance sheet clean-up exercise, PNB plans to sell up to Rs3,000-crore worth of bad loans to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) in the ongoing 4th quarter of the current fiscal.
“PNB was one bank which was away from this (ARCs) market and did not tap this market in the last six years,” PNB Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian had told the news agency.
Besides, the bank is organising special camps for recovery at various places, she said. The bank is also looking at one-time settlement proposals and other measures to reduce bad loans.
For the third quarter ended December 31, 2015-16, PNB’s asset quality deteriorated and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose to 8.47 per cent of the gross advances as against 5.97 per cent in the same quarter a year ago.
likewise, net NPAs rose to 5.86 per cent of the advances as of December quarter of 2015-16, from 3.82 per cent in the year-ago period.
In absolute terms, the gross NPAs increased to Rs34,338.22 crore as of December quarter, from Rs22,211.43 crore. Net NPAs were at Rs22,983.40 crore during the quarter, up from Rs13,787.76 crore.
As a result, the bank’s provision against bad loans increased sharply to Rs2,867 crore during the quarter as compared to Rs1,976 crore in the same period, a year ago.
Those who have the capacity must return their bank loans in the larger interest of the country, Ananthasubramanian had said recently. “Wilful defaulters also block your (banks as well as general public) access to finance,” she had said.