India’s top 25 wilful defaulters owed a total of Rs 58,958 crore to various lenders as of March 31, Union Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad informed the Parliament on August 2.
Wilful defaulters are a category of borrowing entities and individuals who default on payments or other repayment obligations to the lenders, even when they have the means to honour the said obligations.
Mehul Choksi promoted Gitanjali Gems Ltd is the top wilful defaulter in the list with Rs 7,110 crore of loans yet to be repaid. It is followed by Era Infra Engineering Ltd with Rs 5,879 crore as the amount owed to lenders, while Concast Steel and Power Ltd ranked third in the list with Rs 4,107 crores in overall dues.
The number fourth and fifth position in the defaulter list is occupied by REI Agro Ltd and ABG Shipyard Ltd with Rs 3,984 crore and 3,708 crore of reported dues pending with lenders as on March end, respectively.
In absolute terms, the number of wilful defaulters stood at 2,790 in FY22, lower than 2,840 previous fiscal, Karad said.
Apart from sharing the details of top wilful defaulters, Karad said that during the last five financial years, scheduled commercial banks (scbs) wrote off loans amounting to over Rs 9.91 lakh crore.
India’s largest lender State Bank of India’s (SBI) write-offs remained the highest among other public sector banks. SBI reported write-offs amounting to Rs 19,666 crore in the previous fiscal, lower than Rs 34,402 crore of write-offs in FY21.
Union Bank of India wrote off Rs 19,484 crore of loans in FY22, higher than Rs 16,983 crore in the previous fiscal. Punjab National Bank (PNB), meanwhile, wrote off Rs 18,312 core of loans in FY22, higher than Rs 15,877 crore during FY21.
Overall, banks wrote off loans amounting to Rs 1.57 lakh crore during the previous fiscal, the lowest in five years, the centre said.
On the recoveries front, while SBI’s total recoveries stood at Rs 7,781.7 crore during FY22, HDFC Bank’s total recoveries were at Rs 2,765.1 crore.
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