Bulk of the NPAs from loans given before 2014, says Jaitley
NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley, on Tuesday, said the bulk of non-performing assets (NPAs) of public sector banks have arisen from loans disbursed before 2014, before the BJP came to power at the Centre.
His statement came in response to a poser during the Question Hour in Rajya Sabha by Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram, wanting to know how many loans given to banks after May 1, 2014, have become NPAs.
“It is absolutely clear that the bulk of NPAs today have arisen out of loans given prior to April 1, 2014,” Jaitley said.
Earlier, Samajwadi party MP Neeraj Shekhar sought the government’s reply on why NPAs that were termed a “scam” during the UPA’s tenure had risen from ₹2 lakh crore to ₹9 lakh crore. Jaitley replied that the rise was on account of an asset quality review undertaken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2015, which found that in the nonperforming loans, there were cases where the banks carried out aggressive lending, or did not do a proper risk assessment along with cases of wilful default.
Responding to why the government does not waive loans for farmers as it has done for corporate houses, Jaitley said the government has not waived any such loans. “Only when a loan remains non-performing after four years, and the bank feels that the chances of its recovery are slim, it changes the category of the loan. But the debtor’s responsibility is to pay back remains. The bank does this provisioning to get relief in income tax,” he said.
He said that Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrencies are not legal tender. The government has, as recently as December 29, cautioned investors to be wary of virtual currencies, he said.