Fin Min on course to meet NPA recovery target

The Finance Ministry is on course to meeting the NPA recovery target of Rs 1.8 lakh crore by March 31, 2019 with the recoveries already touching Rs 1.08 lakh crore and many big-ticket default cases reaching resolution.

Finance Ministry sources said big ticket recoveries were due this month or in March from Essar Steel and Bhushan Power & Steel which together can fetch over Rs 60,000 crore. Aand they are just a few among the many. Recoveries have already touched over Rs 1 lakh crore in the current fiscal.

Last year, Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar had said that recoveries of about Rs 1.8 lakh crore were assessed by banks which would be from cases under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and those outside it.

Public-sector banks recovered Rs 74,562 crore from bad loans in the year ended in March 2018. The state-run banks will focus on recoveries, which will include developing an e-auction portal for auctioning properties seized by the portals.

There is so much urgency among the lenders to recover their dues that not taking any chances of possible delay, SBI had put its entire Essar Steel loan exposure of Rs 15,431 crore on sale though it did not meet the desired response.

In 2019, the NCLT is expected to finalise corporate insolvency resolution process of stressed assets -- Videocon Group, Monnet Ispat, Amtek Auto, Ruchi Soya, Lanco Infratech, Jaypee Infratech.

In 2018, over Rs 80,000 crore was recovered from various corporate debtors under IBC, according to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs Secretary earlier.

In the case of Essar Steel, the Supreme Court has already rejected the pleas of the operational creditors, clearing the deck for ArcelorMittal's offer which has put up a Rs 42,000 crore bid for the Ruias company. In case of Bhushan Power & Steel, JSW is inching closer to acquiring them with a Rs 19,650 crore offer.

The Ministry has asked banks to monetise their non-core assets and expects assets worth Rs 18,000 crore to be monetised this fiscal but this looks difficult, the sources added.

-IANS

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