Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday that banks have recovered more than Rs 10 lakh crores from bad loans between 2014 and 2023, as part of the reforms process implemented by the Modi government.
“The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has investigated around 1,105 bank fraud cases, which resulted in the attachment of proceeds of crime amounting to 64,920 crores. As of December 2023, assets amounting to 15,183 crores have been restituted to public sector banks,” the Finance Minister posted in a detailed statement on X.
“The Opposition, habituated to spreading lies, wrongly claims that there has been a “waiver” of loans given to industrialists,” the Finance Minister said.
She said that the ‘seeds’ of the NPA crisis were sown during the Congress-led UPA era through ‘Phone Banking’ when loans were given to undeserving businesses under pressure from UPA leaders and party functionaries. This led to a massive increase in Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) and institutionalised grafts.
“Many banks hid and avoided reporting their bad loans by ‘evergreening’ or restructuring them. Various measures by our government and the RBI, such as the Asset Quality Review, disclosed hidden mountains of NPAs and ended the accounting tricks used to hide them,” the Finance Minister said.