No Plan to Extend Deadline for Banks to Clean Up Balance Sheets: RBI

Reserve Bank of India on Friday said it has no plans to revisit the March, 2017 deadline to clean up the public sector banks’ balance sheets.

HYDERABAD: The Reserve Bank of India on Friday said it has no plans to revisit the March, 2017 deadline to clean up the public sector banks’ balance sheets.

“I think we have made it quite clear that we expect that the banks should take proactive and conservative approach so that their balance sheets are cleaned up by 2017. And it is beginning of the cycle,” said S S Mundra, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank.

Speaking to media on the sidelines of an event here, Mundra said, “December was the first quarter. And from the few results which have come, you might have seen that banks have started taking those steps. So there is no reason or trigger to really have any revisit on those things.”

The restructured and bad assets combined together have gone over 13 per cent. On non-performing assets, Mundra said the private sector banks have ‘apparently’ performed relatively better than their public sector counterparts after the global financial crisis. On lending to startups, he said they may fall under either manufacturing or service sectors, and that they need equity push in early stage. “However, banks are designed more to offer debt component at a later stage,” he said.

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