The government may initiate action against top bank loan defaulters soon, as the bad loans of public sector lenders reaches close to Rs 7 lakh crore.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and top officials of the RBI, including Governor Urjit Patel and his deputies Viral Acharya and S S Mundra, on Friday held a meeting on the rising NPAs of the public sector banks.
Officials said that the 50 wilful defaulters have been identified against whom some action may be taken soon as they have the capability to pay back to the banks, but have not been doing so.
Sources said the list of wilful defaulters includes diamond traders, grounded airlines, mining companies, agricultural cooperatives, realty companies and also a media house.
Sources said that various methods of dealing with bad loans with public sector banks were discussed, but the idea of ‘bad bank’ floated by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian was rejected as pre-mature at the moment.
Published 10 March 2017, 17:34 IST