Scheduled commercial banks have written off over ₹16 lakh crore worth of loans during FY14 and FY24, Lok Sabha was informed on Monday. The House was also told that nearly two out of five posts at board level is vacant in 12 public sector banks.
Data presented along with written response by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman showed that the written off amount by all the scheduled commercial banks was around ₹29,000 crore in Fiscal Year 2014-15, which rose to over ₹1.70 lakh crore in Fiscal Year 2023-24.
“Banks write-off non-performing assets (NPAs), including, inter-alia, those in respect of which full provisioning has been made on completion of four years, as per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines and policy approved by banks’ Boards,” Sitharaman said. Further, she clarified that such write-offs do not result in waiver of liabilities of borrowers and therefore, they do not benefit the borrower.
“Banks continue pursuing their recovery actions initiated against borrowers under the various recovery mechanism available to them, such as filing of a suit in civil courts or in Debts Recovery Tribunals, action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, filing of cases in the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, etc.,” she said.
There were specific queries regarding write-offs for large borrowers and industrial houses, but quoting RBI, Sitharaman responded by saying that information regarding loan written-off in respect of corporate houses is not maintained by the central bank. However, year-wise details of write-off of NPAs pertaining to ‘Large industries and Services’ and total NPAs written-off by scheduled commercial banks are maintained. Data showed the said amount as over ₹9.26 lakh crore or around 57 per cent of total written-off amounts.
“With regard to the name of companies, the disclosure of borrower-wise credit information is prohibited under Section 45E of the RBI Act, 1934,’ she said. As per RBI data, there were 29 unique borrower companies, which have been classified as NPAs and each of them having outstanding of ₹1,000 crore and above. Aggregate outstanding in these accounts were over ₹61,000 crore, she said.
Vacancies at Board level
In response to another question, Minister of State in the Finance Ministry Pankaj Chaudhary shared data related to vacant positions of directors on the Board of public sector banks. As on date, total number of positions of Directors on the Board is 186, out of which 78 or over 40 per cent is vacant. While SBI has 7 posts vacant out of 19, Punjab National Bank has 7 out of 16, Bank of Baroda has 6 out of 16 and Punjab & Sind Bank has 8 out of 14.
“Filling up the posts of Directors on the Board of PSBs including Bank of Maharashtra, is a regular process. PSBs intimate the vacancies on the Board of the bank and difficulties faced by them, if any, from time to time. The government takes all the required action to fill up the vacancies at the earliest possible,” Chaudhary said.
