Bank GNPAs decline to multi-decadal low of 2.3% in March, may inch up by March 2027

Mumbai: The gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) of the banking system declined to a multi-decadal low of 2.3 per cent in March 2025, the Reserve Bank said on Monday.

The level of the GNPAs had stood at 2.6 per cent in September 2024.

In the half-yearly The Reserve Financial Stability Report, the RBI said the GNPAs for 46 banks accounting for 98 per cent of the total assets of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), may rise to 2.6 per cent by March 2027.

It can be noted that dud assets have been one of the most challenging part for the banking system for a large part of the latter part of the previous decade, especially due to stress among corporate segment, but the system has been improving on the key ratios ever since.

Given the prevalent tendencies among banks to evergreen loans or not recognise NPAs at all, the RBI had to step in and force lenders to recognise certain loans as non-performing through the asset quality review. As the state-run lenders had to be capitalised using public money as a result of the same.

The FSR said loan write-offs, including technical write-offs — which can be recovered in the future — were one of the prime reasons for the reduction in GNPAs over the last five years.

As per the FSR, write-offs to GNPA ratio for SCBs moved up to 31.8 per cent in FY25 from 29.5 per cent in the previous year, led by private sector lenders and foreign banks, and added that write-offs by PSBs exhibited a marginal decline.

The half-yearly slippage ratio, measuring new accretions to NPAs as a share of standard advances at the beginning of the half year, remained stable at 0.7 per cent.

From a sectoral perspective, the agricultural sector had the highest contribution to GNPAs at 6.1 per cent, while it was broadly stable on the personal loans side at 1.2 per cent.

However, PSB’ GNPAs from the credit card segment moved up to 14.3 per cent as against 2.1 per cent in case of the private sector rivals.

Share of the large borrowers in the GNPAs was 37.5 per cent as compared to their 43.9 per cent share in the overall outstanding loans. This cohort’s GNPA ratio declined from 3.8 per cent in September 2023 to 1.9 per cent in March 2025, the FSR said. None of the top-100 borrowers were classified as NPAs, the FSR said, adding that their share in the overall loan pie was stable over the last six months at 15.2 per cent.