Non-performing assets (NPAs), including those in respect of which full provisioning has been made on completion of four years, have been removed from the balance sheet Bank Worried through the write-off, Sitharaman said in a reply to the Rajya Sabha.
“Banks write off NPAs as part of their routine exercise to clean up their balance sheets, avail tax benefits and optimize capital. reserve Bank of India Guidelines and policy approved by their boards. As per the information received from Reserve Bank of India, Scheduled Commercial Banks (Statistics Sweden) wrote off an amount of Rs 10,09,511 crore during the last five financial years,” PTI quoted him as saying.
The borrowers of the written off loans will continue to be liable for repayment and the process of recovery of dues from the written off borrowers loan As the accounts continue, the borrower does not benefit from the write-off, she said. Banks continue the recovery proceedings initiated in the written off accounts through various recovery mechanisms available, such as filing suits in civil courts or debt recovery tribunals, bankruptcy and through the Bankruptcy Code, 2016 and sale of non-performing assets.
He said that SCBs have made a total recovery of Rs 6,59,596 crore including recovery of Rs 1,32,036 crore from write-off loan accounts during the last five financial years.
In cases where it is prima facie found that the officers are responsible for non-compliance of laid down systems and procedures or misconduct or non-observance of due-diligence norms, action is initiated against the delinquent officers under the Board- Sanctioned Employee Accountability Policy, she said.
He said that as per information received from public sector banks, staff accountability has been fixed in respect of NPA cases against 3,312 bank officials (of the rank of AGM and above) during the last five financial years and appropriate punitive action has been taken accordingly. Has been. Mistake.
Responding to another question, Sitharaman said that the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) has informed that currently, only a few banks are using blockchain technology on a small scale.
Therefore, the issue relating to interoperability of such a platform among banks does not exist, she said.
In addition, he said that the Indian Banks Blockchain Infrastructure Company (IBBIC) Pvt Ltd, which was incorporated with the objective of providing a platform to discover, build and implement Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) solutions for the Indian financial services sector Was, currently working. scope of implementation of domestic letter of credit (LC) Issuance through the platform as its first use case.
The consortium consists of 18 banks which include major public and private sector banks of India.
reserve Bank of India The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been providing guidance to the development of blockchain-based applications through its mechanism for testing innovative technologies, products and services known as the Regulatory Sandbox.
He said that blockchain technology has been listed as an innovative technology in this regard, where innovators can apply to test their products through this mechanism.
He added that there is no proposal to set guidelines or set a model common blockchain technology platform for banks.
(With inputs from PTI)