PNB's big wilful defaults fall to Rs 153 bn in June; improve 0.87% over May

Dues from big wilful defaulters of Punjab National Bank (PNB) fell by 0.87 per cent to Rs 153.54 billion on June 30 compared to previous month, the bank data has shown.

The data on big wilful defaulters is pertaining to those borrowers who took a loan of Rs 2.5 million and above from the public sector lender.

Such borrowers had an outstanding of Rs 154.9 billion at the end of May 2018.

For the financial year ended March 2018, the bank's balance sheet had closed with big wilful defaults owing Rs 151.71 billion.

PNB suffered a standalone net loss of Rs 122.82 billion in 2017-18, as against a profit of Rs 13.24 billion in 2016-17.

The major defaulters included Kudos Chemie Ltd - Rs 13.01 billion; Kingfisher Airlines Rs 5.97 billion; Jas Infrastructure Rs 4.1 billion; VMC Systems Rs 2.96 billion; MBS Jewellers Rs 2.66 billion; Tulsi Extrusion Rs 1.75 billion and Arvind Remedies Rs 1.58 billion.

Among others included ICSA (India) Ltd Rs 1.34 billion; Bhawani Industries Rs 1.06 billion; Indu Projects Rs 1.02 billion; BBF Industries Rs 1.01 billion. These borrowers took the loan from PNB as part of a consortium lending from various banks.

The defaulters who took loan solely from PNB were: Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery - Rs 8.99 billion; Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds - Rs 7.47 billion; Zoom Developers - Rs 4.10 billion; Apple Industries Rs 2.48 billion; Mahua Media Pvt Ltd - Rs 1.04 billion and Shree Sidhbali Ispat Rs 1.65 billion.

Among others were: Rupana Papers Rs 1 billion; Surya Vinayak Industries Rs 1.33 billion; Vishal Exports Overseas Rs 983.9 million; Ramsarup Nirmaan Wires Rs 1.48 billion; Ramsarup Lohh Udyog Rs 1.29 billion; Rupana Papers Rs 1 billion and Rana Alloys Rs 789 billion.

The banking sector, particularly state-owned lenders, is grappling with mounting non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans as also a host of scams and frauds. NPAs in the banking sector stood at Rs 8.31 trillion as of December 2017.

The total bad loan write-off by the public sector banks stood at over Rs 1.2 trillion in the last fiscal, with SBI bearing the burnt at Rs 401.96  billion, nearly 25 per cent of the total write-offs during 2017-18.

This was followed by Canara Bank (Rs 83.10 billion), Punjab National Bank (Rs 74.07 billion) and Bank of Baroda (Rs 49.48 billion).

Scam-hit PNB, which has suffered a fraud of Rs 143.57 billion allegedly carried out by celebrity jewellery designer Nirav Modi and his associates, witnessed a sharp deterioration in its asset quality with gross loans mounting to 18.38 per cent of gross advances at the end of March 2018, as against 12.53 per cent a year ago.

Net NPAs have also soared to 11.24 per cent against 7.81 per cent year ago.

In absolute terms, the gross NPAs of PNB surged to Rs 86,620 crore in the fourth quarter last fiscal as compared to Rs 553.7 billion in the same quarter previous year. Similarly, the net NPA also rose to Rs 486.84 billion from Rs 327.02 billion at the end of March 2017.