Bad loans or non-performing assts (NPAs) worth Rs 10.57 lakh crore were written off by the banking sector in the past five years. According to the Reserve Bank of India’s reply to a Right to Information (RTI) filed by The Indian Express, banks wrote off bad loans worth Rs 209,144 crore in 2022-23 against Rs 174,966 crore in the previous fiscal and Rs 202,781 crore in March 2021. The RBI or the banks that wrote off the bad loans have never revealed the identities of these borrowers.
Banks recovered only Rs 109,186 crore out of the Rs 586,891 crore bad loans written off in the last three years. The total defaulted loans (including write-offs but excluding loans recovered from write-offs in three years) was Rs 10.32 lakh crore. If the write-offs were included, the total NPA ratio wouldn’t have been 3.9% but 7.47% of advances. The RBI reply also showed that banks have written off a staggering Rs 15,31,453 crore since FY2012-13.
State Bank of India was at the top in reducing NPAs by writing off loans at Rs 24,061 crore followed by Punjab National Bank at Rs 16,578 crore, Union Bank at Rs 19,175 crore, Central Bank of India at Rs 10,258 crore and Bank of Baroda at Rs 17,998 crore.
Not surprisingly, public sector banks had the lion’s share of write-offs at Rs 366,380 crore, accounting for nearly 62.45% of the exercise in the last three years.
— source newsclick.in | 24 Jul 2023