Congress asks govt to name loan waiver beneficiaries

NEW DELHI: Hitting out at the Centre for the poor state of economy, the Congress on Saturday said the country’s economic condition couldn’t be ameliorated without improvement in the banking sector.

Demanding setting up of a high-level panel to examine the process of loan waiver, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate asked the government to name the corporates whose loans had been waived off in the past six years.

“The government should make public the names of those whose debts have been waived, a high-level committee should be constituted to examine the process of loan waiver and it should also assess financial viability and potential of the banking sector,” the Congress leader said.

The demand has come a day after global banking group Credit Suisse stated that the banking sector’s impaired assets remained at Rs 16.88 lakh crore — 15.7 per cent of the advances — as of December 2019, despite a decline in gross non-performing assets (NPAS) to Rs 9.1 lakh crore — 9.2 per cent of the advances.

The Congress leader said the grand old party had been raising economic issues with the hope that someday it would shake the government out of slumber and “denial” and make it understand the truth of economic recession.

“According to the recent reports, the banking problem is affecting India badly. Until the banks improve, India’s economic plight is almost impossible to solve,” she said.

“As on date, about 16 per cent of loans has become stressed assets, which is Rs 16.88 lakh crore.

“These are the figures for December 2019. It was 12 per cent in 2017,” she said referring to the report.

In the December quarter, new NPAS started to form and at an increased pace in sectors like telecom, real estate, MSMES and automobile, she said, adding that the government was saying NPAS had declined from 11.7 per cent to 9.2 per cent. “It should have been good news, the economy should have improved. But has it,” she asked.