The finance ministry on Monday held a meeting with senior officials of public sector banks (PSBs) to review their efforts for loan recovery, including from Kingfisher Airlines.
"This is routine review meeting to assess various recovery efforts. We are stepping up recovery efforts," said a senior official at the ministry.
Asked if Kingfisher's bad loans were part of the discussions, the official said that all cases of defaults were reviewed.
The meeting was part of the ministry's exercises to clean up the balance sheets of PSBs. It also deliberated on the ways banks can be more proactive in dealing with cases of wilful and genuine defaulters.
Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of PSBs rose to Rs 3.61 lakh crore at the end of December 2015, while those of private lenders were at Rs 39,859 crore.
Gross NPA ratio as percentage of advances rose to 7.30 per cent. For private banks, it stood at 2.36 per cent as of December-end.
There are some 7,686 wilful defaulters who owe Rs 66,190 crore to PSBs; 6,816 cases have been filed and First Information Reports have been lodged in 1,669 cases. Banks have initiated action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act in 584 such cases.
Amid outrage over Vijay Mallya's alleged massive loan default, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had cautioned against going on a "fishing expedition" on bad loans so that it doesn't make banks worried about lending. However, the finance minister also made it clear that individual misdemeanours would be "looked into differently".
