There are 433 borrowers have taken loans of over Rs 1,000 crore and above amounting to Rs 16.31 lakh crore, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. The top 10 borrowers account for Rs 28,152 crore of nonperforming assets (NPAs) of the state-owned banks. 

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said that in order to improve the health of the financial sector, to reduce the NPAs, to improve asset quality of the banks and to prevent slippages, RBI has issued instructions, including designing framework for revitalising distress assets. According to the framework, each bank should have a board approved loans recovery policy and it requires a robust mechanism for early detection of signs of distress including prompt restructuring in the case of all viable accounts. It has been stipulated to review NPA accounts of Rs 1 crore and above by board and top 300 NPA accounts by the management of the board, he said.

The outstanding loan to industry at the end of December 2014 rose to Rs 22.53 lakh crore as against Rs 22.13 lakh crore at the end of March 2014, he said. "The management of loan sanctioning or recovery activity in a bank is essentially an internal management function and every bank board is authorised to frame suitable policies," he said.

By Premji