Actual bad loans about Rs 20L cr, says ex-RBI Dy K C Chakrabarty

Total chunk of problematic loans in the Indian banking sector, at this stage, is around Rs 20 lakh crore, much higher than what is reported by banks and estimated by the central bank and government, said K C Chakrabarty, former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Unless the actual chunk of bad loans is recognised first, bad loan resolution is nearly impossible, said the veteran banker-turned-central banker.

“I’ll put the figure around Rs 20 lakh crore. It is not correct to say that NPAs are only Rs 6 or 7 lakh crore. One should include all troubled loans including reported bad loans, restructured assets, written off loans and bad loans that are not yet recognised. Unless this portion is recognised first, there will be no solution to the bad loan problem,” said Chakrabarty, in an exclusive interaction with Firstpost, on Monday.

As on December, the total gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 42-listed banks in India stood at Rs 7.3 lakh crore. There is no accurate estimate of the total restructured loans and the amount of loans written off by banks. But, according to government data, for the fiscal year ended March, 2016, Indian public sector banks wrote off Rs 59,547 crore, while in the three fiscal years prior to that (FY13, 14 and 15) banks had together written off Rs 1.14 lakh crore of loans.Read more