PSU banks write off loans over Rs 5.82 lakh cr in last 5 years: MoS Finance

Public sector banks (PSBs) have written off bad loans of about Rs 5.82 lakh crore in the last five financial years, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

During 2024-25, the loan write-off of PSBs was at Rs 91,260 crore, compared to Rs 1.15 lakh crore in the previous fiscal, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

The write-off was highest at Rs 1.33 lakh crore during 2020-21, declining to Rs 1.16 lakh crore in the following year and to Rs 1.27 lakh crore in 2022-23.

In contrast to write-offs, PSBs have recovered around Rs 1.65 lakh crore over the last five years.

Recovery is around 28 % of the total write-off in the previous five financial years.

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Banks write off NPAs, including those in respect of which full provisioning has been made on completion of four years, as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines and policy approved by banks’ Boards, Chaudhary said. “Such write-off does not result in waiver of liabilities of borrowers and therefore, it does not benefit the borrower. The borrowers continue to be liable for repayment, and banks continue to pursue recovery actions initiated in these accounts,” he said. Further, he said, recovery in written-off loans is an ongoing process and banks continue pursuing their recovery actions initiated against borrowers under the various recovery mechanism available to them, such as filing of a suit in Civil Courts or in Debts Recovery Tribunals, and filing of cases in the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, etc. Replying to another question, Chaudhary said that more than Rs 21.68 lakh crore has been disbursed under Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) across the country over the last five years.

In response to another question, Chaudhary said, according to provisional data provided by the RBI for the financial year 2024-25, Scheduled Commercial Banks have recovered a total of Rs 32,466 crore through actions initiated in 2,15,709 cases under the SARFAESI Act.

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