Banks should improve their ability to manage stressed assets: RBI

29 Mar 2012 Evaluate

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to improve their ability to manage stressed assets, but said that there was nothing alarming about an unexpected rise in the non-performing assets levels in this financial year. Banks, especially the public sector banks have been reporting higher NPAs since the second quarter of the fiscal because of the continued slowdown in economic activities and the rising domestic rate of interests.

SBI, the country's largest lender, has reported record gross NPAs in Q3 at Rs 40,080 crore and has seen a 87.5% spike in its provisioning. Private lenders however are better off. What is worrying about the NPAs is not the increase in their numbers but the 300% spike in corporate debt recast (CDR). Under CDR, creditors, among others, make concessions by reducing the interest rate, rescheduling repayments, converting debt into equity/ preference shares, and waiving principal/ interest (to a limited extent) to turnaround the companies.

The sectors which are seeking CDR are the textiles industry, aviation industry and DISCOMS. Textile companies are seeking CDRs for Rs 1 trillion worth of debts. The RBI has approved Rs 18,000 crore for Air India, while Kingfisher's Rs 7,000 crore was already recast in 2010. The debt in DISCOMS is already touching Rs 80,000 crore while many have recently gone for CDRs.

In total, CDRs have already touched a whopping Rs 76,251 crore, three times more than in the previous year’s Rs 25,054 crore. This makes the overall CDR asset in the system to over Rs 1.9 trillion. The increase in CDRs clearly points out to the distress of India Inc. Apart from economic downturn and high interest rates, use of working capital funds for funding capital expenditure, diversion of funds and adverse currency movements are some of the other reasons responsible for the sharp increase in CDR cases. 

© 2026 The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. MoneyWorks4Me ® is a registered trademark of The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd.

×