Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to meet heads of PSU banks on June 6

Amid mounting bad loans and record losses by several public sector banks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will hold a meeting with the heads of PSBs on June 6 to find ways to deal with the situation. The meeting will review the annual performance of PSBs as well as financial institutions and deliberate on capital requirement of these entities.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of state-owned banks posting more than Rs 20,000 crore losses in the fourth quarter of the 2015-16 fiscal alone. Few more banks, including SBI and Canara Bank, are yet to announce their annual numbers.

Sources said the broad agenda for the meeting includes rising non-performing assets, deteriorating balance sheets, consolidation and capital requirement during the current fiscal, 2016-17. Besides, the meeting will take stock of various schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY).

Jaitley will also review the progress made with regard to Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (MUDRA) and Stand Up India programme, sources said.

Gross NPAs or bad loans of PSBs rose from Rs 2,67,065 lakh crore in March 2015 to Rs 3,61,731 lakh crore in December. The gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of the PSBs increased from 5.43 per cent of advances as on March 2015 to 7.30 per cent as on December 31.

On capital infusion, the Finance Minister has already made a budget provision of Rs 25,000 crore and has promised to provide more if needed. Consolidation process within the public sector banks has been already initiated with SBI proposing to merge its five associate banks as well as the newly created Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) with itself.

The country’s largest lender has five associate banks— State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Hyderabad. Of these, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore are listed. SBI first merged State Bank of Saurashtra with itself in 2008. Two years later, State Bank of Indore was merged.