The gross non-performing assets of public sector banks have increased to Rs 5.59 lakh crore in April-June quarter of FY 2017 from Rs 5.02 lakh crore in the March quarter, with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warning bankers to stay away from massive write offs.

Out of 27 public sector banks, 12 have gross domestic NPAs of more than the system level, according to an official data accessed by DH. These include Allahabad Bank with an NPA of 12.92% of their gross advances, Bank of Baroda (13.23%), Bank of India (16.01%),  Bank of Maharashtra (12.64%), Central Bank of India (13.52%) Dena Bank (11.88%), Indian Overseas Bank (20.26%), Oriental Bank of Commerce (11.45%), Punjab National Bank (15.41%) and UCO Bank (18.66%).

In a meeting with the heads of PSBs on Friday, Jaitley is understood to have told them to go aggressively on recovery of bad loans from small and large borrows. The recovery efforts should further be stepped up to match and then overtake the exponential growth of gross NPAs, Jaitley said. 

“Within the recovery, most of it is coming through write offs whose percentage is increasing every year,” Jaitley observed and asked the lenders to focus on cash recovery and upgradation, according to an official, who attended the meeting. 

Talking to reporters after the meeting, the finance minister said that banks have been facing difficulty in finding buyers of stressed assets. “One of the challenges which the banks did mention that they are facing...to find alternative promoters or buyers. They have been making efforts to do that," Jaitley said.  

He also expressed the hope that once the situation improves banks will be able to cut rates further. According to sources, Jaitley also asked the bankers to increase credit growth to small and medium enterprises. 

The growth in MSE credit has declined to 5.6% in the April-June quarter of 2017 from the 11.2% in the same quarter last year. Credit to manufacturing MSEs has shown a negative growth in the June quarter, according to the data.

Soaring liability 

Out of 27 public sector banks, 12 have gross domestic NPAs of more than the system level

Jaitley told banks to go aggressively on recovery of bad loans from small and large borrows 

Finance Minister wants bankers to increase credit growth to small and medium enterprises