The RBI on Tuesday identified 12 accounts totaling 25 per cent of the non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, of the banking system for insolvency proceedings, a day after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said action was on the anvil shortly in this regard.
"The IAC (Internal Advisory Committee) noted that under the recommended criterion, 12 accounts totaling about 25 per cent of the current gross NPAs of the banking system would qualify for immediate reference under IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016)," the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement following the IAC's first meeting here on Monday.
"The IAC recommended for IBC reference all accounts with fund and non-fund based outstanding amount greater than Rs 5,000 crore, with 60 per cent or more classified as non-performing by banks as of March 31, 2016," it said.
The IAC has been constituted under the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, passed by the government last month, that allowed more power to the RBI to tackle the NPAs issue. It has been empowered to issue directions to commercial banks to initiate insolvency proceedings for recovering bad loans.
"The IAC took up for consideration the accounts which were classified partly or wholly as non-performing from amongst the top 500 exposures in the banking system," the RBI said.
Following his annual review in New Delhi of the performance of public sector banks (PSBs) on Monday, Jaitley told reporters that he expects "precipitative action" to be taken after the recent ordinance on bad loans, and this could strengthen recovery efforts of PSBs.
He said the RBI is at a fairly advanced stage of preparing a list of debtors whose cases require resolution through the IBC process, and added that 81 cases have been filed under IBC, with 18 of them coming from financial creditors.
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The NPAs of state-run banks at the end of last September rose to Rs 6.3 lakh crore (almost $100 billion), as compared to Rs 5.5 lakh crore at the end of June 2016.
--IANS
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