No loan waiver for big corporates: Jaitley

New Delhi: The Union government has not waived any loans of big NPA defaulters, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday dismissing rumours that loans of capitalists are being written off by banks.

In a blog, Jaitley said that over the last few days, rumours are being propagated regarding waiver of loans of capitalists by banks. "The public needs to ask the rumour-mongers at whose behest or under whose pressure were such loans disbursed in the past. They should also be asked that when these debtors delayed in repayment of their loans and interest thereon to the banks, what decision was taken by the then government," the finance minister said.

Jaitley said that rather than taking firm decision against debtors, the then government relaxed the loan classification norms to keep



defaulters as non-NPA account holders. The asset quality review (AQR) carried out for clean and fully provisioned balance-sheets in 2015 revealed high NPA, the Finance Minister said.

As a result, he said, loans of about Rs 4,54,466 crore, which were actually fit to be NPA and were under the carpet, were recognised after intensive scrutiny under AQR.

 

Jaitley further said with the object of increase credit off-take and creation of jobs, government has taken "the big decision" of capitalising state-owned banks. "Through capital infusion, banks weakened by NPAs would become strong and become capable of raising adequate capital from the market," Jaitley said. For receiving the capital, banks will have to carry out several reforms so that such situations do not recur, he added.