Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the performance of banking sector has improved as non-performing asset (NPA) ratios declined in the financial year 2018-19 (FY19) and credit growth accelerated. However, she noted that financial flows to the economy remained constrained because of decline in the amount of equity finance raised from capital markets and stress in the non-banking financial companies (NBFC) sector.
Sitharaman has pointed out that the monetary policy saw a U-turn over the last year. She also noted that the benchmark policy rate was first hiked by 50 basis points (bps) and later reduced by 75 bps due to weaker than anticipated inflation, growth slowdown and softer international monetary conditions. She noted that the eco-system for insolvency and bankruptcy is getting systematically built out. She added that it has already led to recovery and resolution of a significant amount of distressed assets as well as palpably improved business culture. However, she indicated that liquidity conditions have remained systematically tight since September 2018.
Talking on the performance of public sector banks (PSBs), the Minister said that the sector witnessed improvement during 2018-19 and the gross NPA ratio decreased from 11.5 percent to 10.1 percent between March 2018 and December 2018.
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