In order to deal with the major problem of banks' non-performing assets (NPAs), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the government is going to announce a policy to push for the quick settlement of NPA at banks in a couple of days and added that the decision will be taken in tandem with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Jaitley has said that although the NPA amounts are large, the major ones are restricted to a limited number of companies. He further added that the problem of big NPAs is confined to essentially 30-50 companies and therefore those 30-50 accounts need to be resolved.
To tackle this problem the RBI has set up an oversight committee to look into process of cases referred to it by different banks and seeing the response and its performance, the government is also considering increasing such committees. NPAs of public sector banks (PSBs) rose by about Rs 1 lakh crore during the April-December period of 2016-17, the bulk of which are accounted for by the infrastructure sector - power, steel, roads - and textiles.