NATIONAL ASSET RECONSTRUCTION COMPANY

  • Recently, the Ministry of Finance has announced that the National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARCL)along with the India Debt Resolution Company (IDRCL) will take over the first set of bad loans from banks and try to resolve them.
  • The health of the balance sheets of Indian banks has improved significantly over the last few years with their Gross Non-Performing Assets (GNPA) ratio declining from a peak of 11.2% in FY18 to 6.9% in Q2FY22.
  • NARCL has been set up by banks to aggregate and consolidate stressed assets for their subsequent resolution. PSBs will maintain 51% ownership in NARCL.
  • IDRCL is a service company/operational entity which will manage the asset and engage market professionals and turnaround experts. Public Sector Banks (PSBs) and Public FIs will hold a maximum of 49% stake and the rest will be with private sector lenders.
  • The government had already announced sovereign guarantees of Rs 30,600 crore for Security Receipts (SRs) to be issued by NARCL, which will be buying Rs 2 lakh crore non-performing loans from banks.

Non-Performing Asset

  • NPA refers to a classification for loans or advances that are in default or are in arrears on scheduled payments of principal or interest.
  • In most cases, debt is classified as non-performing, when the loan payments have not been made for a minimum period of 90 days.
  • Gross non-performing assets are the sum of all the loans that have been defaulted by the individuals who have acquired loans from the financial institution.
  • Net non-performing assets are the amount that is realised after provision amount has been deducted from the gross non-performing assets.

Bad Bank

  • A bad bank is a financial entity set up to buy Non-Performing Assets (NPAs), or Bad Loans, from banks.
  • The aim of setting up a bad bank is to help ease the burden on banks by taking bad loans off their balance sheets and get them to lend again to customers without constraints.
  • After the purchase of a bad loan from a bank, the bad bank may later try to restructure and sell the NPA to investors who might be interested in purchasing it.
  • A bad bank makes a profit in its operations if it manages to sell the loan at a price higher than what it paid to acquire the loan from a commercial bank.
  • However, generating profits is usually not the primary purpose of a bad bank — the objective is to ease the burden on banks, of holding a large pile of stressed assets, and to get them to lend more actively.

Challenges

  • Finding buyers for bad assets in a pandemic hit economy will be a challenge, especially when governments are facing the issue of containing the fiscal deficit.
  • Without governance reforms, the Public sector banks (accounted for 86%, of the total NPAs) may go on doing business the way they have been doing in the past and may end up piling-up of bad debts again.
  • Also, the bad bank idea is like shifting loans from one government pocket (the public sector banks) to another (the bad bank).
  • Union Government, in the last few years, has infused nearly Rs 2.6 lakh crore in banks through recapitalisation.
  • Those who oppose the concept of bad banks hold that the government has on its part recapitalised the banks to compensate for the write-offs and hence, there is no need for a bad bank.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT

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