Govt to provide more capital to PSU banks, if needed: Sinha

Gurgaon: The government today said it has a "very good sense" of the problem of bad loans in banking sector and will continue to provide funds to strengthen state-owned banks.

"We have now a very good sense of...Stressed assets. We believe that the stressed assets are about Rs 8 lakh crores of the total advances that public and private sector banks...," Finance Jayant Sinha said here at the second Gyan Sangam.

The government has provided Rs 25,000 crore in the Budget 2016, he said, adding, "we will provide more as necessary to ensure that our banks are well capitalised".

"We have about about 11.25 per cent of the numbers of stressed assets in the system right now. The good news in all of this is two-fold that - the set of stressed assets are stabilised, we know where they are and we know how to deal with them," he added.

In addition, he said, the RBI has also made certain changes to the manner in which capital can be recognised as part of the tier-I capital and that has added further strength to bank balance sheet.

As far as the set of stressed assets and the NPA situation are concerned, Sinha said: "We think we now have a very good control over them, and of course are working very closely with the RBI.

"We will continue to work with those numbers to see how we can further expedite and strengthen the recovery process for these stressed assets."

Government has plans to infuse Rs 70,000 crore in PSBs over four years ending March 2019. Of this, Rs 25,000 crore each would come in 2015-16 and 2016-17. Infusion of Rs 10,000 crore for each of 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscals.

The capital infusion roadmap indicates that the overall capital requirements of the banks over the four-year period would total Rs 1.85 lakh crore.

Sinha said the issue of sale of non-core assets of banks will be deliberated upon at the Gyan Sangam.

The Reserve Bank, he said, has closely looked into the stressed assets across both public and private sector banks as well as Non-Banking Financial Companies.

He also said that efforts are being made to strengthen the stressed asset resolution capabilities of the banks which would help in dealing with the problem.

"Rs 8 lakh crore stressed assets is for the entire scheduled commercial banks, public and private sectors banks across the system. The system has roughly about Rs 69 lakh crore of total loan book," he added.

The minister said the government would go through phases as part of the banks transformation agenda.

"We were in phase II, when we were looking at assets quality and really trying to assess the system wise balance sheet and balance sheet of individual banks so that process was necessary pre condition before we get into the third phase. This addition of Gayan Sangam is to look into all aspects including consolidation as well," he added.