Finance Minister Piyush Goyal will hold a meeting with heads of public sector banks (PSBs) to look into issues in areas such as credit offtake and bad loan position of lenders. Among the key issues, the meeting will take up the matter of credit flow to Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), agriculture and retail sectors.
That apart, the meeting will review bank’s financial performance for the nine months ended December 2018. Also, Non-performing assets (NPAs) would also come up for discussion. Meanwhile, various initiatives taken by the government have yielded results, with the bad loans of public sector banks declining by over Rs 23,000 crore from a peak of Rs 9.62 lakh crore in March 2018.
At the same time, PSBs have also made a record in recovery of Rs 60,726 crore in the first half of 2018-19, which is more than double the amount recovered in the corresponding period last year. According to the latest finance ministry data, non-NPA accounts overdue by 31 to 90 days (Special Mention Accounts 1 & 2) of PSBs have declined by 61 percent over five successive quarters from Rs 2.25 lakh crore as of June 2017 to Rs 0.87 lakh crore in September 2018.