"Fitch Ratings has placed Punjab National Bank's (PNB) Viability Rating of 'bb' on Rating Watch Negative (RWN), following the large fraud reported by PNB," the US-based agency said in a statement.
Indeed, there were frauds, and the politician-banker-industrialist nexus played a role in the rise of NPAs, but governance issues in Indian banking are far more nuanced and complex, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Banks have collected about 1,500 kg of gold from temples and trusts under the Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS) since its launch last November.
Experts say, auditors must not allow themselves to be intimidated by the client management into conducting audits by conversation. It is important for auditors to conduct proper interviews and ask probing and searching questions.
In the June quarter of FY24, 51 per cent of consumers who took small-ticket personal loans already had more than four credit products at the time of accessing yet another new loan, compared with just 17 per cent in the June quarter of FY20, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
India's economy continues to be robust, but downside risks such as rising crude oil prices, adverse weather conditions, and the global banking crisis outweigh the upside potential in gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the current financial year (FY24), the finance ministry said on Tuesday in its Monthly Economic Review for March. "We reiterate that downside risks to our official forecast of 6.5 per cent for real GDP growth in FY24 dominate upside risks," the review said. "Opec's surprise production cut has seen oil prices rise in April, off their lows of low-seventies per barrel in March.
In the quarter gone by (Q3 of FY22), private lender HDFC Bank issued around 950,000 credit cards, its highest ever credit card issuance in any single quarter. Since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revoked the embargo on it in August 2021 to issue new credit cards, the lender has issued 1.37 million credit cards. This is according to a senior bank executive, who was present in an analysts' call after the lender's Q3 earnings. In Q3, we achieved the highest ever issuance, with 950,000 card issuances.
Recpaitalising banks through taxpayers' money will not solve the NPA problem.
SBI has been reeling under a mountain of bad loans for the past few years as the key sectors in the economy are faltering.
All these companies were provided loans by PNB as part of consortium lending.
The country's largest lender SBI on Thursday reported a 4.20 per cent decline in consolidated December quarter net at Rs 6,257.55 crore, largely because of a higher base in the year-ago period where it had benefitted from a Rs 4,500 crore one-off income. On a standalone basis, the city-headquartered lender's net profit came in at Rs 5,196.22 crore as against Rs 5,583.36 crore in the year-ago period and Rs 4,574.16 crore in the preceding September quarter. SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara told reporters that the year-ago period had seen the resolution of the Essar Steel loans, resulting in an over Rs 4,000 crore interest income and Rs 500 crore other income benefit.
A total of 4,452 cases have been disposed at pre-admission stage and 66 have been resolved after adjudication. 260 cases have been ordered for liquidation.
Among the bank groups, under the baseline scenario, public sector banks' gross NPA ratios may increase to 13.2 per cent by September 2020 from 12.7 per cent in September 2019.
In addition to challenges such as reining in non-performing assets (NPAs) and boosting profits, Chaudhry will have to repair the bank's reputation, build internal controls, and improve regulatory relations.
Amid an increase in localised lockdowns across the country, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday said there is no need for a loan repayments moratorium at present, stating that businesses are better prepared to face the situation. It can be noted that the RBI had announced a six-month moratorium in the early days of the national lockdown last year to help borrowers impacted by a chilling in economic activity. The entire state of Maharashtra is in a lockdown for non-essential services and localised and night lockdowns are being observed in many pockets of the country, including the national capital, to restrict the surge in cases.
Reserve Bank has lowered interest rates by 0.50 per cent since January 2015.
Insurer has also made fresh investments since December 2015 quarter when RBI told banks to recognise bad loans
It has been a year since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated prompt corrective action (PCA), an exercise that puts weak banks under central bank scrutiny, against the 94-year-old Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB). But recently, this low-profile Chennai-headquartered bank found itself attracting some unwonted publicity when 60 per cent of its shareholders voted against a proposal to re-appoint seven directors, including one of the promoters, K R Pradeep (who holds around 2 per cent), and the company's managing director & chief executive officer S Sundar.
As the clean-up has taken hold, loan growth slipped to 10.7 per cent in the last fiscal
The government plans to bring down its stake to 26 per cent in these two banks, which are yet to be identified. This may not come in the way of getting investors for these banks, provided the government is willing to step back rather than run them the way it had been doing for over five decades since these banks were nationalised, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced the adoption of the New Delhi Leaders Declaration, a significant victory for India's G20 presidency that came amid increasing tensions and divergent views over the Ukraine conflict.
"I am an academic and I have always made it clear that my ultimate home is in the realm of ideas," Rajan said in a letter to staff.
He said the short term macroeconomic priorities of the RBI continue to focus on bringing down inflation towards the government-set target of 4 per cent
Progress on the steps taken by Governor Shaktikanta Das' predecessor Urjit Patel to restore financial system integrity will be a key thing to assess any damage to the institution, Subramanian said.
The mergers will not involve any cash but only share swaps
For now, the concerns over bad loans have taken a back seat; a bigger challenge for the banking community is credit growth, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'The economy is expected to bounce back and things are expected to recover faster than what we previously thought.'
Today, with growth having slowed and macro-economic challenges in every direction, would the government have benefited from the advice of 'Harvard' economists? asks T N Ninan.
Leaving behind the luxe life and dapper suits of foreign banks, Puri and his team at the upstart venture shared fizz drinks, wore a footwear brand popular among the middle class, shared a rat-infested space in a yet-to-be gentrified work space to plan and execute it.
This is the first time in the RBI's history that a governor is leaving without willing to renew his contract
While the situation Sitharaman finds herself in may not be that good, how does it stack up against her three immediate predecessors Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and the late Arun Jaitley?
The meeting with the top officials of public sector banks is scheduled for March 5, a senior finance ministry official told PTI.
Reserve Bank Deputy Governor S S Mundra on Friday said that he expects banks to cut interest rates
The speed at which he led the central bank in different areas -- ranging from internal reorganisation to inflation fighting, stabilising the currency, taking on rogue corporations, cleaning up bank balance sheets, and opening the sector -- makes one believe that Rajan knew he had only three years to do his job. A fascinating excerpt from Tamal Bandyopadhyay's MUST-READ Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking.
The central bank dashed hopes of any steep interest rate reduction.
The bank saw loans worth Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion) slipping into NPAs during the March quarter, taking the gross NPA ratio to 5.82 per cent.
Rajan tells RBI colleagues he will be returning to academics
India's aggregate NPA as a percentage of GDP is far lower than that in Italy, Greece.
Thanks to Rajan we are an inflation-targeting country now
The RBI has been critical of banks for using restructuring schemes to hide the stress.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances