Central Bank tops list of highest NPAs among PSU banks

Central Bank of India has topped the list of public sector banks with maximum bad loans including restructured assets as a percentage of total advances.

According to the data provided by the RBI to the Finance Ministry, Central Bank of India's 21.5 per cent assets are either bad or have been restructured to save them turning non-performing assets (NPAs).

The other banks which have significant amount of gross NPAs and restructured loans include, United Bank of India (19.04 per cent), Punjab & Sind Bank (18.25 per cent) and Punjab National Bank with 17.85 per cent as on December 2014.

Indian Overseas Bank, State Bank of Patiala, Allahabad Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce all have bad and restructured loans in excess of 15 per cent.

The rising bad loans have become a major concern for the Reserve Bank as well as the government.

Most of the restructured loans is from the corporate sector. The top-30 defaulters are sitting on bad loans of Rs 95,122 crore (Rs 951.22 billion), which is more than one-third of the gross non-performing assets of PSU banks at Rs 2,60,531 crore (Rs 2.6 trillion) as on December 2014.

There are four kinds of restructuring. The first and foremost is restructuring of advances extended to industrial units, restructuring under Corporate Debt Restructuring and restructuring of loans extended to MSME as per RBI guidelines.

However, banks have their own operational rule for restructuring of small loans.

RBI has not prescribed any board or bank level position at which these loans need to be approved.