Dues of PNB's big wilful defaulters fall 0.87% in June

New Delhi: Dues from big wilful defaulters of Punjab National Bank (PNB) fell by 0.87% to ₹ 15,354.52 crore on 30 June compared to ₹ 15,490 crore as on 31 May 2018, bank data has showed. Big wilful defaulters owed PNB ₹ 15,171.91 crore in 2017-18, resulting in standalone net loss of ₹ 12,282.82 crore in 2017-18 as against a profit of ₹ 1,324.80 crore in 2016-17.

According to PNB, big wilful defaulters are those which borrowed ₹ 25 lakh and above from the public sector bank and haven't paid back.

The banking sector, particularly public sector banks, is grappling with mounting non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, and a host of scams and frauds.

Bank NPAs stood at ₹ 8.31 trillion as of December 2017. The total NPA write-off by the public sector banks stood at over ₹ 1.20 trillion in 2017-18, with State Bank of India accounting for nearly 25% of the total write-offs at ₹ 40,196 crore. SBI is followed by Canara Bank ( ₹ 8,310 crore), Punjab National Bank ( ₹ 7,407 crore) and Bank of Baroda ( ₹ 4,948 crore).

Scam-hit PNB, which has suffered a fraud of ₹ 14,357 crore allegedly carried out by jeweller Nirav Modi and his associates, witnessed a sharp deterioration in its asset quality with gross loans mounting to 18.38% of gross advances at the end of March 2018, as against 12.53% a year ago. PNB NPAs rose to 11.24% in 2017-18 against 7.81% year ago. Gross NPAs, in absolute terms, surged to ₹ 86,620 crore in the fourth quarter of 2017-18 as compared to ₹ 55,370 crore in the year-ago period. Similarly, the net NPA also rose to ₹ 48,684.29 crore from ₹ 32,702 crore at the end of March 2017.