Ministry of Corporate Affairs wants NPAs public, RBI objects
NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Corporate Affairs is in favour of making the list of corporate Non Performing Assets (NPA) public, even as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cautioned against it, wanting to keep the names strictly confidential.
“Rising NPAs has been a matter of concern for the Ministry but the recent case in rise of wilful defaulters is very unhealthy and if affects the business environment. So we feel that the list should be made public,” a senior official from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs told The New Indian Express.
However the official added that the RBI is not in the favour of making the list public. “We have discussed it both Finance Ministry and RBI.
However, RBI is not in the favour of making the list public,” the official added. According to the RBI rules, borrower-wise credit information is not available for disclosure as the Central bank feels that the credit information submitted by a bank should be treated as confidential. Rising NPA is not a new trend. However, in the last five years , the amount of NPA has gone up substantially. Public Sector Banks alone have written off bad loans worth rs2.41 lakh crore between April 2014 and September 2017, as per the own admission by the government earlier this week in a written reply to parliament.
Even when the government is trying hard to resolve bad loans under various means including the bankruptcy court process NPAs are just piling up. As of December 31, 21 staterun banks — almost two-thirds of the banking assets in India, had stressed loans worth rs 8.26 lakh crore. The bad loan pile for private sector bank was about rs1.1 lakh crore, or 4.6 per cent their total loans. Foreign banks operating in India have reported bad loans worth rs 14,426 crore, or 4.1 per cent of the total money they lend.
According to a joint study report by credit rating agency Crisil and Assocham, banking sector will be saddled with gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) worth a staggering `9.5 lakh crore by March-end. In this context, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs feel that by making the list Public will make corporate houses more responsible in paying loans.