NPAs gallop to gargantuan figure of ₹8.31 lakh crore

New Delhi: It seems the efforts of the Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bring down the number of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of scheduled commercial banks is going in vain as the NPAs are on the rise in the NDA regime. According to latest government data, the total NPAs have increased to Rs 8.31 lakh crore from Rs 2.51 lakh crore in 2014, when the NDA regime started after registering an emphatic win in the general elections.

In a written reply to a question raised by BJP members Paresh Raval and D S Rathod (both from Gujarat), Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla told Lok Sabha that in March 2014 the total NPAs was of Rs 2,51,054 crore which rose to Rs 3,09,399 crore in March 2015 and it increased further to Rs 5,66,247 crore in March 2016. "The total NPAs in March 2017 was of Rs 5,66,247 crore which rose to Rs 8,31,141 crore till December 2017," Shukla said in his written reply to Lok Sabha.

In the reply, the minister said, "The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has apprised that, from the data, it may be observed that there is a sharp increase in NPAs during 2015-16 (by 125 per cent in new accretion to NPAs)."

"This was mainly due to asset quality review (AQR) undertaken by RBI with the help of newly introduced large borrower database (CRILC) which provides system-wide view of a borrower and, thus, enabled better identification of NPA hitherto not recognised by banks," the minister told the Lower House.

Shukla further told the House that the RBI had carried out a temporal analysis of NPA in large borrowers (based on large borrowers' data reported to CRILC database).

"As per the analysis, funded advances outstanding of fresh loans sanctioned to large borrowers up to September 2014 constituted 66.6 per cent of all large borrowers' funded advances while NPA ratio for such borrowers stood at 20.6 per cent as at end quarter September 2017," the minister said in his reply to Lok Sabha.

Meanwhile, the loan write-offs has helped in bringing down the percentage of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to 13 per cent as on March 2017 from a high of 25 per cent in March 2011.