Bank Board Bureau's first meeting discusses stressed assets

The first meeting of the recently-formed Bank Board Bureau (BBB) met on Friday at the RBI headquarters in Mumbai and discussed issues of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, as well as strategies for recapitalising banks.

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, who attended the meeting along with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, told reporters here that filling up of vacancies of directors and non-executive chairmen was also discussed at the meeting.

"Second, how to better recognise the stressed assets and if there are some hurdles, then how to solve them was discussed," he said.

"How that (recapitalising banks) will happen, how the government and RBI will work with banks' boards was discussed.

"Then, what the role of consolidation will be and how much capital it will require from the government also came up, and strategies around it also figured in the discussions," he added.

Besides Bureau chairman, former comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) Vinod Rai, members -- ICICI Bank's former joint managing director H.N. Sinor, Bank of Baroda's former CMD Anil K Khandelwal, rating agency Crisil's ex-chief Rupa Kudwa and ex-officio members Ameising Luikham, secretary, department of Public enterprises, and R.Gandhi, deputy governor, RBI - were also present.

Taking the first step towards a holding company structure for state-run banks, the government, in August last, announced the setting up of the BBB to recommend appointment of directors in PSBs and advise on ways of raising funds and dealing with stressed assets.

The quantum of exposure of Indian scheduled banks in terms of gross non-productive assets, re-cast loans and write-offs was Rs.9.5 lakh crore as of September last year.