The Union Minister of State for Finance, Bhagwat Karad on Tuesday informed the Rajya Sabha that loans worth Rs 1,74,966 crores were written off by scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) in the last financial year and Rs 33,534 crores were recovered from written-off loans in the last financial year.
The MoS Finance was replying to a query by CPI(M) leader John Brittas, seeking details of the loans written off by scheduled and other commercial banks, and the defaulted amount recovered from the written-off loans, over the last five years. He also sought the names and details of accounts against which loans above Rs 10 crores were written off.
In addition, the Upper House member also asked for the names of the top 25 loan defaulters in public sector banks.
As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the amount of loans written off by scheduled commercial banks in the last five financial years was Rs 1,61,328 crores in 2017-18, Rs 2,36,265 crores in 2018-19, Rs 2,34,170 crores in 2019-20, Rs 2,02,781 crores in 2020-21 and Rs 1,74,966 crores in 2021-22, the minister’s written reply stated.
However, Karad said the RBI doesn’t maintain records on the number of accounts written off.
The recovery in written-off loans over the last five financial years was Rs 12, 881 crores in 2017-18, Rs 25,501 crores in 2018-19, Rs 30,016 crores in 2019-20, Rs 30,104 crores in 2020-21, and Rs 33,534 crores in 2021-22, as per the RBI, his written reply further added.
MoS Karad, however, informed that as per the provision of Section 45E of the RBI Act 1934, the central bank is prohibited from disclosing borrower-wise credit information. Banks typically write off loans where there is no scope of recovery. Banks need to set aside money to cover potential losses from such loans. This impacts the profitability of banks. According to the data submitted by the minister, PNB wrote off Rs 59,807 crore loans in last four fiscal years, followed by IDBI Bank which wrote off Rs33,135 crores of loans. Among private sector banks, ICICI Bank wrote off Rs42,164 crores of loans while HDFC Bank wrote off Rs31,516 crore loans.