As Table 1 shows, the net non-performing assets (NPAs) of public sector banks continue to be very high. This is a real problem, especially given the degree to which public sector banks still dominate lending, as shown in Table 2. Private banks do much better, a fact reflected in their relative valuation by the markets, shown in Table 3.Tables 4 and 5 tell a specific story. Lending to industry - particularly to infrastructure - has shot up sharply. This is in spite of the fact that the overall credit growth rate is quite anaemic, as shown in Table 6.NPAs might look even worse when corporate debt restructuring is added in. Table 7 shows how aggregate (and approved) debt has risen. Table 8 and 9 show debt in cases withdrawn, and cases outstanding.

StatsGuru: Taking stock of non-performing assets in banking space

Business Standard

Greece and the 'troika' must accept reality

A managed Grexit

Business Standard analyses one family's finances and suggests a way forward

Case study

Budget: Rs 1.5-2 croreBusiness Standard brings you a snapshot of average current rates and unit sizes in localities that offer property in a price range of Rs 1.5-2 crore. If you are looking at buying real estate and your budget falls within this range, an idea about prevailing rates would come in handy

Realty check

Lessons from the fate that befell rebel BJP CMs

Room for rebels?

When J Jayalalithaa was forced to step down from the post of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister after a special court verdict in a disproportionate asset case disqualified her, her party members started addressing her as "People's CM". The party mouthpieces and the channel Jaya TV used this title to address her till the time the Karnataka High Court overturned the verdict. Now, a Twitter handle, @ShadowAgriGoI, has started calling itself "People's Ministry of Agriculture". The handle tweets out news and developments related to farmers and agriculture. "This is the Shadow Handle of @AgriGoI. This is an initiative to keep the government accountable based on constructive criticism," says an introduction. Interestingly, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and the Congress handle @INCindia are its followers. On Saturday, the @INCIndia handle was seen promoting the 'people's' handle, asking people to follow it.

People's handle

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee has made it a habit to appear in headlines for all the wrong reasons. Battling opposition attack over his recent "chop off hands and gouge out eyes" remark, he told journalists that he was not afraid of police cases and was ready to go to jail. Of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party didn't let this opportunity pass by. The party's national secretary, Siddharth Nath Singh, compared the functioning of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi with that of Mamata and Abhishek. "An unofficial Emergency is on in West Bengal where democratic rights are being curbed," he said.

Quite an emergency

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wouldn't miss a chance to take potshots at the Lalu-Nitish alliance in Bihar. After Janata Dal (United) legislator Anant Singh was arrested last Wednesday in an eight-month-old abduction case, senior BJP leader and former deputy chief minister of the state, Sushil Kumar Modi, posted on his Facebook timeline that "the validity given to criminals after the Lalu and Nitish alliance was being suspended till the elections so that people could experience good governance, at least for a few days".

Poll vault

Apropos the article "Wrong target for benign neglect" (June 27) by T N Ninan, India's future leaders cannot even cope with Class 2 reading and arithmetic. Isn't that disheartening? Illiteracy is a much deeper malaise than any other malaise affecting India right now and it is growing at an alarming pace. And the solution lies at the grassroots, not in the hallowed portals of management and technology institutes. First, we need to redefine literacy. Is it merely going to be the number of students who enroll and graduate every year or who actually learn to grasp what is taught? Government schools need to ramp up their infrastructure and teacher-student ratio as most of the population still cannot afford the hefty fees that the private counterparts demand.We need to urgently shift from rote-learning to practical learning because every student's needs are different. Engaging in a highly productive manner with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other parties in this field can yield t

Letters: Redefine literacy

Apropos the report, "Govt's claims of economic recovery only statistical: Sinha"(June 25), most of the concerns raised by the senior leader Sinha, who has been a distinguished civil servant and a union finance minister, are well taken. Coming from within the ruling party, it should be seen as constructive criticism.There is just one comment from him which might not be completely valid: The reference to the exclusion of the elderly members in cabinet positions need not be taken as a personal slur on their reputation.Ideally, senior members could use it to their advantage since they are not going to be bothered with the operational matters. We see this in efficient global corporations where the patriarchs accept non-executive decision-making positions and groom the juniors for the future. Did not his own son get a ministerial berth due to this policy?T Syama Sundar  HyderabadLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg

Letters: Constructive criticism

Apropos the report "Disconnect between safety image of PSBs and their valuations" (26 June), safety image is a mere perception. This perception arises from government ownership. A majority of Indians who have safety image perception are not aware of the problems of state-owned banks (SoBs).Should we go by this image perception or by the reality? The reality is SoBs cannot command good valuations due to their low scores on all performance parameters. It is, however, true that being government-owned, they will not run the risk of bankruptcy. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not allowed any private bank to fail in India. Any private bank's failure would have led to systemic risk. Even other banks would have experienced a run on them. How will the RBI address the problem of the disconnect between the safety image and the valuation of public sector banks?Improving performance metrics that would contribute to valuations would take time. In fact, this may not happen in the next five

Letters: Safety image vs reality

Chief financial officers and treasurers are increasingly adopting mobile corporate banking, discarding decades-old methods of transferring funds such as banker's drafts and cheques, finds an HSBC global research. HSBC corporate customers are currently making $50 billion in mobile payment through its mobile corporate banking platform, HSBCnet. It is expected to reach $100 bn in global payments in 18 months. So far banks have primarily invested in mobile innovations focused on retail banking but B2B adoption is slowly taking off. Globally, 12 per cent of HSBCnet customers are active users.A report on the state of global mobile money market:

Mobile Payment Landscape

The wearable market maintained its upward trajectory in the first quarter of 2015 as new vendors, including Apple, prepared to enter the market. A new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker estimates that 72.1 million wearable devices will be shipped in 2015, up a strong 173.3 per cent from the 26.4 million units shipped in 2014. Shipment volumes are expected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.6 per cent over the five-year forecast period, reaching 155.7 million units shipped in 2019.So far the demand for basic wearables, those that do not run third party apps has been huge. However, IDC expects smart wearables, those capable of running third party apps, to take the lead in 2016. Vendors like Fitbit and Xiaomi will further propel the market with their sub-$100 bands, and IDC expects this momentum will continue throughout 2015."Growth in the smart wearables market points to an emerging battleground among c

Wearable market to grow 173.3 per cent in 2015

India is among the front-runners with a 10.8 per cent average salary increase this year, ahead of countries like Indonesia at 9.5 per cent, China at 8.6 per cent and Philippines at 6.7 per cent. Mature markets will see lower increases with Hong Kong and Singapore both at 4.5 per cent, Australia at 3.5 per cent and Japan lowest at 2.5 per cent.According to the Towers Watson 2015-16 Asia Pacific Salary Budget Planning report, almost 87 per cent of respondents plan to allocate a larger portion of their budget to high performers. The high-tech industry stands out with 11 per cent companies planning to allocate the entire budget increase to high performers. Predictably, in countries where overall salary increases tend to be higher, good performance is also better rewarded. In India, salary increase for the 'highest-performing' employees average 12 per cent, which is 30 per cent higher than 'average' performers and nearly twice the regional average.When it comes to variable compensation, the

Salary increase in India among the highest in APAC this year

Avoid making them handmaidens of the HRD ministry

IIMs' toughest case

Silence from the ruling party on the allegations is arming a feckless opposition with the weapons to disrupt Parliament

BJP must not allow charges against ministers to derail Parliament session

Most hurdles in the way of sufficient supply of housing for the poor have been created by the states and the urban local bodies

Local bodies can't be ignored in schemes for urban housing, infrastructure

It is often noticed that delegates participating in conferences arrive 30-45 minutes late, delaying the entire flow of events. A financial technology company is not taking any chances, especially at a time when the monsoon is likely to play havoc with schedules. To ensure that all the attendees are present on time, it has promised special gifts for people who arrive early. In fact, it has said that the first 50 delegates who arrive even before the registration process starts will receive "exciting" gifts.

Timely gift

While speaking at the fourth India Minerals and Metals Forum in Delhi, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup spit fire at certain companies for creating problems in the coal auction. He said some over-enthusiastic companies chose to dig their own graves by bidding heavily. "Then, they blamed the government, as we all do when something goes wrong," he said. He told the audience that people asked him why he did not stop those companies. "If I stopped people from bidding higher or lower, as the case might have been, I would be addressing all of you from Tihar jail, not this place," he said, leaving the audience in splits.

Auction dilemma

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) in West Bengal is tying itself up in knots about a possible alliance with the Congress, if one goes by the sound bites coming out of the party camp in recent days. Last Friday, senior CPI(M) leader Gautam Deb said that the Left Front did not have the strength to defeat the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) on its own in the next Assembly elections and hinted at an "understanding" with the Congress. Within days, the party's state secretary, Surjya Kanta Mishra, said the TMC was "slightly ahead" of the Left in terms of mass support - so there was nothing much to worry. Last heard, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury had dismissed all speculation, saying the party would follow the resolution adopted at the last party congress - that of not joining any front with the Congress party.

Mixed signals

Apropos the editorial "Monsoon woes" (June 24), it is rightly stressed that antiquated drainage cannot meet our changing circumstances. The main factors involved in this misery are change in weather conditions and topography due to the enhancement of construction activities and the involvement of multiple agencies. The storm flow depends on topography, soil, land use and the climatic characteristics of the area. Surface drains are designed to handle the flow from storm frequencies of past few years. These drains were constructed on the basis of old storm run-off, which has adapted to the climatic changes, resulting in a new pattern of rainfall. Looking at all these factors, there is an urgent need to redesign the drainage system. This is essential since the existing facilities are not good enough.In addition to this, the drainage system can work efficiently if there is regular maintenance, which would entail periodic checking and immediate clearance of choked drains. Moreover, natural

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