Slow recovery of debt repayment

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The government has transferred Non-Performing Assets worth 14.56 lakh crore rupees in the past nine fiscal years (2014-15) into the bad loan account. In the nine financial years since 2014, public sector banks have transferred bad loans totaling 14,56,226 crore rupees into the bad loan account. The recovery process for the loans placed in the bad loan account doesn’t stop; it continues gradually. However, the recovery level from the bad loan account is quite low. Among the total bad debt, the portion of major industries was 7,40,968 crore rupees.

Minister of State for Finance, Bhagwat Karad, revealed in the parliament that Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) have recovered Rs 2,04,668 crore from the loans placed in the bad loan account during April 2014 to March 2023. This implies the recovery rate is only 14 percent.

This also includes debts from companies. But in the year 2017-18, they managed to collect a total of 1.18 lakh crore rupees from loans that were put in the bad loan account. However, the collection declined to 0.91 lakh crore rupees in the year 2021-22. It decreased even further to just 0.84 lakh crore rupees in the year 2022-23. During that year, private banks added a total of 73,803 crore rupees in bad loans to the account.

According to a report provided by various banks, as of December 2022, there are 16,044 intentional debt offenders across the country. Out of these, 85 percent of the debt was taken from public sector banks. Before this, in response to a petition filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the government had stated that individuals like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, and others had taken loans worth thousands of crores from banks and fled abroad, intentionally not repaying the debt.