Over 6,000 PSB officers slapped with penalty for bad loans in FY18, says Finance Minister Arun Jaitley

Amid ongoing Winter Session of Parliament, the Centre on Friday informed that strict action has been taken against more than 6,000 officers of nationalised banks in cases of lapses that led to bad loans in the financial year 2018-19. In a written reply, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that minor and major penalties including dismissal, compulsory retirement and demotion have been imposed against erring officials.

"As per the inputs received from nationalised banks, in FY 2017-18, 6,049 officers have been held responsible on account of staff delinquency in NPA accounts...," Jaitley added.

Depending upon the gravity of lapses, the minister said "minor penalty/ major penalty have been imposed against erring officials" and in all the cases, depending upon the amount involved, CBI and police complaints have been lodged.

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The 19 nationalised banks, including PNB and Canara Bank, reported a net loss of Rs 21,388 crore in the first half of the fiscal. This compares with a combined loss Rs 6,861 crore in the similar period of 2017-18.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said that no loan account of state-owned banks with outstanding of over Rs 25 crore has been "declared as evergreen" since June 2014.

In another written reply to the lower House, Shukla said as a result of transparent recognition of bad loans, the non-performing asset (NPA) amount of all commercial banks rose from Rs 5.66 lakh crore at end-March 2016 to Rs 9.62 lakh crore at end of March 2018. Since then the amount has declined to Rs 9.43 lakh crore.

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He further said the public sector banks have reported a "record recovery" of Rs 60,713 crore in the first half of the current financial year. This, he said, was double the amount recovered by them during corresponding period of the last financial year.

(With inputs from agencies)