New Delhi: The top 50 defaulters of public sector banks had an exposure of Rs 1.21 lakh crore as on December 2015.
Giving this information in the Rajya Sabha, minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha said the number of wilful defaulters of PSBs rose from 5,554 to 7,686 in three years to December 2015 while the amount involved more than doubled to Rs 66,190 crore from Rs 27,749 crore.
“The total exposure of top 50 defaulters of PSBs as on December 2015 was Rs 1,21,832 crore,” he said in a written reply in the Upper House. In another reply, Mr Sinha said that there were 1,365 borrower accounts having funded outstanding loans of Rs 500 crore and above at the end of December 2015.
He further said the government has taken specific measures to address issues in sectors such as infrastructure, steel and textiles, where incidence of non-performing assets is high.
In his submission to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) earlier, RBI governor Raghuram Rajan had blamed on overall economic downturn for the sudden rise in bad loans at public sector banks.
Dr Rajan listed six primary reasons for spurt in stressed assets such as domestic and global economic slowdown, delays in statutory and other approvals, aggressive lending practices during upturn as evidenced from high corporate leverage, laxity in credit risk appraisal and loan monitoring in banks and lack of appraising skills for certain projects. Besides, he also listed wilful default, loan frauds and corruption in some cases among the key reasons.
