The decision of the central bank and banking regulator to increase the group exposure limit that banks have in calculating the quantum of loans given to a particular corporate conglomerate as a proportion of the total loans given by the specific bank, will benefit India’s biggest private company, Reliance Industries Limited. This is the fifth article in a series.
As of now, Sambhaji Patil Nilangekar is thick in the cut and thrust of an election campaign in Latur, apparently entirely unaffected by this episode. The BJP Maharashtra general secretary and Labour Minister’s company Victoria Agro Food Processing owed approximately ₹62.85 crore to two public sector banks but settled for just ₹25.5 crore, with over ₹50 crore written off.
This Newsclick exclusive is Part 1 of a three-part series on how the Modi government pushed banks into repeatedly lending to cronies, adding to the bad loan mountain. A company linked to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari allegedly received loans from Bank of Maharashtra in violation of the bank’s own policies and received multiple subsequent loans to prevent the account from becoming an NPA.
Total NPAs reached a whopping Rs 9.5 lakh crore by end March 2018. India’s banking sector, the foundation of our modern economy, is in crisis. A spate of scams has dragged the credibility of India’s biggest private and public sector banks through the mud. Even more dangerous is a Debt Bomb of bad loans that has grown almost 17 times bigger in the past 10 years.
