Banks write off Rs 10.5 trn in 5 yrs, NPA recovery worth Rs 7.1 trn: FinMin

Banks have written off Rs 10.57 lakh crore during the last five financial years, of which Rs 5.52 lakh crore was in respect of loans pertaining to large industries, the government informed the Parliament on Tuesday.

"As per RBI data, scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) have written off an aggregate loan amount of Rs 10.57 lakh crore during the last five financial years," Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said in reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

The scheduled commercial banks have also recovered Rs 7.15 lakh crore of non-performing assets (NPAs) during the five-year period.

"Comprehensive steps have been taken to recover NPAs, enabled by which, SCBs have made an aggregate recovery of Rs 7,15,507 crore (RBI provisional data for FY 2022-23) in NPA accounts, including written-off loans, during the last five financial years," he said.

In reply to a separate question, Karad said: "Scheduled commercial banks have written off an aggregate amount of Rs 5.52 lakh crore in respect of loans pertaining to large industries and services during the last five financial years (FYs), i.e. from FY 2018-19 to FY 2022-23."

He also said that this includes Rs 93,874 crore written off by all the banks on account of fraud during the five-year period.

Karad said banks regularly evaluate the impact of write-offs as part of the exercise to clean up their balance sheet, avail tax benefit and optimise capital, in accordance with the said guidelines and policies of the respective boards.

"Such write-off does not result in waiver of liabilities of borrowers to repay and therefore, write-off does not benefit the borrowers. The borrowers of written-off loans continue to be liable for repayment and banks continue to pursue recovery actions initiated in written-off accounts through various recovery mechanisms available to them...," Karad said.