NPA, NBFC crises not over yet: HDFC MD

By Anjana Das

New Delhi, July 16 (IANS) HDFC Bank's MD Aditya Puri on Tuesday said the crises in the non-banking financial companies (NBFC) and that OF high non-performing assets (NPA) are not yet resolved, and are being worked upon by stakeholders.

"I don't think they are over yet, but both are being worked upon," Puri told IANS on being asked about the resolution of the two major problems the Indian banking and financial sector is facing.

On NPAs, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Parliament on Tuesday that the total bad loans of commercial banks declined by Rs 1.02 lakh crore to Rs 9.34 lakh crore in the 2018-19 fiscal year on the back of steps taken by the government.

On the NBFC crisis Sitharaman in a post-Budget interaction said NBFC sector crisis has plateaued but not ended yet and her ministry will monitor the emerging situation with the RBI, a day after she announced a slew of measures to address the lending concerns of the NBFCs.

Among the measures and regulatory proposals announced in the the Union Budget 2019-2020, the minister said the government will provide a one-time six-month partial credit guarantee for the first loss of up to 10 per cent if a public sector bank (PSB) buys high-rated pooled assets of up to Rs 1 trillion of financially-sound NBFCs.

Further, supporting the move of consolidation of PSBs, Puri said the mergers would not pose any threat to the private lenders.

"I am all for the merger in the PSU banks," the veteran banker told IANS.

After the merger of State Bank of India and its associate banks in 2017 and the latest merger Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank with Bank of Baroda, the government is likely to go ahead with more such moves to consolidate the public sector banks.

(Anjana Das can be contacted at anjana.d@ians.in)