National Asset Reconstruction Company to be operational next month: IBA CEO

National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL), the name coined for the bad bank announced in the Budget 2021-22, is expected to be operational in June.

Bad bank refers to a financial institution that takes over bad assets of lenders and undertakes resolution.

The new entity is being created in collaboration with both public and private sector banks, Indian Banks' Association Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sunil Mehta told PTI.

"Various preparatory work is going on and we hope that it should be operational next month. The biggest advantage of NARCL would be aggregation of identified NPAs (non-performing assets).

"This is expected to be more efficient in recovery as it will step into the shoes of multiple lenders who currently have different compulsions when it comes to resolving a bad loan," he said.

NARCL will take over identified bad loans of lenders, Mehta said. He added that the lead bank with offer in hand of NARCL will go for a 'Swiss Challenge', where other asset reconstruction players will be invited to better the offer made by a chosen bidder for finding higher valuation of an NPA on sale.

The company will pick up those assets that are 100 per cent provided for by the lenders, he added.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Budget 2021-22 announced that the high level of provisioning by public sector banks of their stressed assets calls for measures to clean up the bank books.

"An Asset Reconstruction Company Limited and Asset Management Company would be set up to consolidate and take over the existing stressed debt," she had said in the Budget speech. It will then manage and dispose of the assets to alternate investment funds and other potential investors for eventual value realisation, she added.

Last year, IBA had made a proposal for creation of a bad bank for swift resolution of non-performing assets (NPAs). The government accepted the proposal and decided to go for asset reconstruction company (ARC) and asset management company (AMC) model for this.

Mehta further said NARCL will pay up to 15 per cent of the agreed value for the loans in cash and the remaining 85 per cent would be government-guaranteed security receipts.

The government guarantee would be invoked if there is loss against the threshold value, he added.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said that loans classified as fraud cannot be sold to NARCL. As per the annual report of the RBI, about 1.9 lakh crore of loans have been classified as fraud as on March 2020.

To facilitate smooth functioning of asset reconstruction companies, the RBI last month decided to set up a panel to undertake a comprehensive review of the working of such institutions.

After enactment of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act in 2002, regulatory guidelines for ARCs were issued in 2003 to enable development of this sector and to facilitate smooth functioning of these companies.

Since then, while ARCs have grown in number and size, their potential for resolving stressed assets is yet to be realised fully.