PSU banks to keep a hawk's eye on NPAs

With the restructuring process in full swing, public sector banks have stepped-up monitoring to keep non-performing assets (NPAs) at desired levels.

First, banks have decentralised the credit and recovery management team by creating a separate team at the regional level. Secondly, special officers are deputed to monitor the restructured accounts on a daily basis and thirdly banks are checking the composition of stocks of a particular entity before addressing the credit needs.

Public sector major Bank of India (BoI) has decentralised the credit management system to ensure efficiency. The bank has also started to check the stock of the inventories of a particular entity.

"We need to know what compromises the inventories. For instance, when raw materials constitute a major portion of the inventory, it means the unit is not functioning properly. On the other hand, if the inventory is full of finished goods, it means that the goods are either not marketed properly, or there is a lack of demand for it. So, treatment in each case would be different and hence we may be able to support the ailing units properly," said BoI General Manager VKR Agarwal.

"These are unprecedented times and hence it calls for special measures to improve the recovery management process. We have set targets for each offices and regions regarding the daily monitoring process, particularly for the accounts worth Rs 25 lakh and above.

Each officer is given a set of clients, whom he is required to visit physically before taking any decision. The idea is to address any threat immediately," said Dena Bank Chairman and Managing Director DL Rawal.

The bank has also set up a team to deal with the accounts that have been declared as NPAs and enforce the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interests (SARFAESI) Act.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) is deploying more people to its 110 SME credit centers to ensure that suspected accounts are addressed quickly.

"Normally, we have around 600 specialist officers at these centers, now another 400 officers are being pulled out of various departments to meet the restructuring target and minimise the defaults," said an executive at the bank. Some banks are even meeting with the clients of these entities so that the accounts could be sorted out under the one-time settlement (OTS) scheme.