Govt monitoring efforts to recover NPA

With bad loans of banks touching Rs 1.27 lakh crore during April-December 2011, the government today said it is monitoring the efforts for recovery of the non-performing assets (NPAs) by the lenders.

"(We are) aggressively looking at efforts to recover NPAs," Financial Services Secretary D K Mittal told reporters here.

High interest rates and lower economic growth has impacted the repayment capacities of borrowers, pushing up the NPAs of banks to Rs 1.27 lakh crore in the first nine months of 2011-12 fiscal.

Banks' bad loans stood at Rs 94,084 crore in 2010-11, Rs 81,813 crore in 2009-10 and Rs 68,220 crore in 2008-09.

Mittal further said that "some more capital" would be infused in the country's largest public sector lender State Bank of India (SBI) in the current fiscal.

Also, the government "will ensure 11 per cent Tier I capital (equity) for SBI in the next two years," he added.

Currently, tier-I capital of SBI is around 9 per cent. On March 30, SBI's executive committee had approved issuance of 3.65 crore equity shares at Rs 2,191.69 a piece through preferential allotment to the government to raise about Rs 7,900 crore.

The Government has recapitalised public sector banks over a period to enable them to maintain Tier-I CRAR (capital to risk assets ratio) at 8 per cent, and also to increase its holding in them to 58 per cent.