PNB’s big wilful defaulters’ dues fall to Rs 15,354 cr in June

Team Udayavani, Jul 8, 2018, 1:12 PM IST

New Delhi: Dues from big wilful defaulters of Punjab National Bank fell by 0.87 per cent to Rs 15,354.52 crore on June 30 compared to previous month, the bank data has showed.

The data on big wilful defaulters is pertaining to those borrowers who took loan of Rs 25 lakh and above from the public sector lender. Such borrowers had an outstanding of Rs 15,490 crore at the end of May 2018.

For financial year ended March 2018, the bank’s balance sheet had closed with big wilful defaults owing Rs 15,171.91 crore. PNB suffered a standalone net loss of Rs 12,282.82 crore in 2017-18, as against a profit of Rs 1,324.80 crore in 2016-17.

The major defaulters included Kudos Chemie Ltd – Rs 1301.82 crore; Kingfisher Airlines Rs 597.44 crore; Jas Infrastructure Rs 410.96 crore; VMC Systems Rs 296.08 crore; MBS Jswellers Rs 266.17 crore; Tulsi Extrusion Rs 175.41 crore and Arvind Remedies Rs 158.16 crore.

Among others included ICSA (India) Ltd Rs 134.76 crore; Bhawani Industries Rs 106.66 crore; Indu Projects Rs 102.83 crore; BBF Industries Rs 101 crore. These borrowers took loan from PNB as part of a consortium lending from various banks.

The defaulters who took loan solely from PNB were: Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery – Rs 899.70cr; Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds – Rs 747.97 crore; Zoom Developers – Rs 410.18 crore; Apple Industries Rs 248.34 crore; Mahua Media Pvt Ltd – Rs 104.86 crore and Shree Sidhbali Ispat Rs 165.98 crore.

Among others were: Rupana Papers Rs 100.49 crore; Surya Vinayak Industries Rs 133.96 crore;Vishal Exports Overseas Rs 98.39 crore; Ramsarup Nirmaan Wires Rs 148.10 crore; Ramsarup Lohh Udyog Rs 129.34 crore; Rupana Papers Rs 100.49 crore and Rana Alloys Rs 78.90 crore.

The banking sector, particularly state-owned lenders, is grappling with mounting non performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans as also a host of scams and frauds. NPAs in the banking sector stood at Rs 8.31 lakh crore as of December 2017.

The total bad loan write-off by the public sector banks stood at over Rs 1.20 lakh crore in the last fiscal, with SBI bearing the burnt at Rs 40,196 crore, nearly 25 per cent of the total write-offs during 2017-18. This was followed by Canara Bank (Rs 8,310 crore), Punjab National Bank (Rs 7,407 crore) and Bank of Baroda (Rs 4,948 crore).

Scam-hit PNB, which has suffered a fraud of Rs 14,357 crore allegedly carried out by celebrity jewellery designer Nirav Modi and his associates, witnessed a sharp deterioration in its asset quality with gross loans mounting to 18.38 per cent of gross advances at the end of March 2018, as against 12.53 per cent a year ago.

Net NPAs were also soared to 11.24 per cent against 7.81 per cent year ago. In absolute terms, the gross NPAs of PNB surged to Rs 86,620 crore in the fourth quarter last fiscal as compared to Rs 55,370 crore in same quarter previous year. Similarly, the net NPA also rose to Rs 48,684.29 crore from Rs 32,702 crore at the end of March 2017.