NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will hold a meeting with heads of public sector banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), in the national capital on Saturday (Dec 30) to address issues related to frauds and wilful defaulters in banks, cybersecurity and bad bank performance.
This will be the third interaction between the FM and state-owned banks in 2023, with previous meetings held in March and July. As per the RBI’s recent report on Trends and Progress of Banking in India, card and internet-related frauds have seen a significant rise of over five times in the first half of FY24 as against the same period last year.
Though the overall amount and types of fraud reported have decreased, the number of fraud transactions has risen to 12,069, involving Rs 630 crore, during April-September of FY24. While the number of total bank frauds reported has declined from Rs 17,685 crore in H1FY23 to Rs 2,642 crore in H1FY24, the issue of wilful defaulters remains a concern.
As of March 31, 2023, there were 2,623 unique borrowers classified as wilful defaulters, with a combined outstanding amount of Rs 1.96 trillion held by scheduled commercial banks. The review will also include an assessment of the progress made by the bad bank.