Recovery of Loans

The Government does not have any proposal to form National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARC) for bad loans of stressed banks. However, Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) have been set up by the Government for facilitating recovery of Banks/Financial Institutions’ dues under Recovery of Debts due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act (RDDBFI), 1993. Under Section 19 (24) of the Act, DRTs have been mandated to dispose off the applications filed by Banks/FIs within a period of 180 days from the date of receipt of application.

The reasons for increase in NPAs include slowdown in recovery in global economy and continuing uncertainty in the global markets leading to lower exports of various products like textiles, engineering goods, leather and gems etc, factors like volatility in prices of raw material and the shortage in availability of power to some sectors. The details of Gross Advances and Gross NPAs to corporate by Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) are as under:

The Government has taken specific measures to address issues in sectors such as infrastructure (power, roads etc.), steel and textiles, where incidence of NPAs is high. The Government has also approved establishment of six new DRTs to speed up the recovery of bad loans of the banking sector, in addition to existing 33. Reserve Bank of India has also undertaken steps which include (i) formation of Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) for revitalizing stressed assets in the system, (ii) flexible structuring for long term project loans to Infrastructure and Core industries, and (iii) Strategic Debt Restructuring (SDR) Scheme.

This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.