PTIMore than 5,200 companies with loan exposures of £5bn or more have been classified as non-performing assets (NPAs) or non-performing loans on banks’ books as of December 31, 2021, Parliament was informed on Monday.
Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) and all Indian financial institutions have been reporting certain credit information of all borrowers with aggregate loan exposures of ₹5 crore and above to the RBI in their CRILC database since the quarter ended June 2014, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said.
The number of individual borrowers with total lending exposures of £5 billion and above that were identified as corporate and classified as non-performing assets (NPA) stood at 5,231 as at 31 December 2021, Mr Karad said in a written response to the loco sabah
The Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) is tasked with collecting, storing and sharing credit data with lenders.
Under this, banks are required to provide CRILC with credit information on all of their borrowers who have total fund and non-fund exposures of ₹5 crore and over.
The number of companies with large credit exposures has decreased compared to 5,623 such companies as of March 31, 2021, the minister said, citing data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
In addition, he said that RBI data held since 2015-16 showed banks took action against 11.25 lakh borrowers under the SARFAESI law from 2015-16 to 2020-21.
“RBI has advised that it does not maintain the details of properties seized under the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act 2002,” Mr. Karad said.
Asked if the government has data on the number of suicides attributed to unavailability of sufficient bank credit, rising interest rates, unauthorized private lending apps, among other reasons, he said there were a total of 5,213 cases related to suicides due to of bankruptcy or debt in 2020, citing data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
In response to a separate question on illegal lending apps, he replied: “According to the findings of the RBI Digital Lending Working Group, from January 1, 2021 to February 28, 2021, the number of illegal lending apps was around 600.”
According to RBI, its “Sachet” portal mechanism for registering complaints from the public against unregistered businesses received about 2,562 complaints against digital lending apps from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021, Karad added.
