Wilful defaulters owe Rs 10,869 cr to PNB; top 10 firms make up one-third

Winsome Diamonds and three other wilful defaulters — Zoom Developers, Suryavinayak Industries Ltd and Century Communication Ltd have been named in the list of top ten defaulters in India by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In fact in April 2015, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan wrote to the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) seeking “concerted” action against the top 10 bank loan defaulters. Since then these companies have been under the scanner of multiple investigating agencies in the country. In some cases the CBI and the enforcement directorate has attached the properties of the defaulters.

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On February 8, The Indian Express reported that 29 public sector banks have written off Rs 1,14,000 crore in the last three years, according to a response by the Reserve Bank of India to an RTI application.

Loan write-offs in the first half of 2015-16 were Rs 25,000 crore. With this, banks would have written off Rs 277,400 crore in the last ten years with more than half the write-offs happening in the last three years.

Gross non-performing assets, or bad loans, are expected to jump 31.48 per cent in the fiscal ending March 2016 to Rs 426,400 crore from Rs 324,300 crore.