Banks' gross NPA drop below 6% in March 2022, lowest in six years

Health of the sector is encouraging: Deputy guv

Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of the banking sector dropped below 6 per cent as of March 2022 — the lowest since 2016 — and net NPAs fell to 1.7 per cent during the same period, indicating that the sector has remained largely unscathed from the ill-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic so far, M Rajeshwar Rao, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said on Tuesday.

At the same time, it would be important to assess if the improvement in the asset quality is broad based or only because of regulatory forbearance, he said. “The preliminary assessment of the health