Letters: Bad loan recovery

With reference to "Govt maps out execution road" (April 4), the front-page news was like a whiff of fresh air for all of us, inundated as we are with an almost daily dose of "new policy pronouncements" and "big-bang schemes". Successive governments have come out with numerous, great sounding policy measures, but as we are aware most of these do not even reach the execution stage.

Even those that cross this bridge come out poorly on the delivery scale. This feeling was setting in, admittedly to a much lower extent, about the present dispensation, too, and people were getting somewhat restless.

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The new assurances should bring cheer all around and convince us that this government means business. Implementation has always been our bugbear; we have heard a zillion jokes about only 10-15 per cent of our many welfare schemes reaching the intended recipients. With the direct delivery initiatives already in place and a new resolve, one hopes things are about to change, for the better.

A route map for "where to start on the bad bank loans" is no rocket science. A fundamental analysis shows, as your report mentions, that the top 30 loan defaulters account for one-third of the total gross non-performing assets of public sector banks.

Further study will make it even closer and bring out that perhaps the top 10 per cent defaulters account for half of all the bad loans. Let the bank chairmen and directors make it their responsibility to go after the top 10 per cent; senior officials can be assigned for pursuing the next 10 per cent and with a system of incentives and penalties we should be able to recover significant sums.

It is time we also started pinning specific responsibility, and not finding scapegoats among mid-level managers, on the people responsible for sanctioning "apparently risky big loans", whether senior bank officials or politicians, and giving them exemplary punishment.

Krishan Kalra, Gurgaon

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