Banks' bad loans soar by 86% in first half
of financial results announced by the listed banks for the first two quarters of the current year.
The analysis does not include the foreign banks and unlisted domestic banks, as their figures were not available.
Incidentally, the collective gross NPA of these 35 banks at the end of first half of 2012-13 is higher than the total gross NPA at the end of last fiscal for the entire banking system, including foreign banks and unlisted domestic banks.
As per RBI data, the gross NPA for all the banks together in the country stood at Rs 1.42 lakh crore at March 31, 2012.
The Reserve Bank recently said the banks need to strengthen their due diligence and credit appraisal system along with overall monitoring mechanism to contain the rising bad assets seen in the banking system.
"Banks need to, not only utilise effectively, the various measures put in place by RBI and the government for the resolution and recovery of bad loans, but also have to
strengthen their due diligence, credit appraisal and post-sanction loan monitoring systems to minimise and mitigate the problem of increasing NPAs," the RBI said in its report on 'Trend and Progress of Banking in 2011-12'.
So far, only four banks -- Bank of Maharashtra, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Syndicate Bank and Development Credit Bank -- have seen their gross NPAs decline, albeit by small margins from the levels recorded at the end of last fiscal.
Together, these four banks have seen their gross NPAs decline by 1.7 per cent (Rs 138 crore)
