Banks have written off bad loans worth Rs 14.56 lakh crore in the last nine financial years starting 2014-15, Parliament was informed on Monday.

More than half of this has come from large industries and services. Out of the total Rs 14,56,226 crore, written off loans of large industries and services stood at Rs 7,40,968 crore, PTI reported.

During the fiscal year ended March 2023, the bad loan write-off was Rs 2.09 lakh crore, Indian Express had reported earlier based on RTI (right to information) queries. 

As per Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad’s written reply to Lok Sabha, scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) have recovered an aggregate amount of Rs 2,04,668 crore in written-off loans, including corporate loans, since April 2014 and up to March 2023.

Loans written-off during the financial year, net of recovery in written-off loans during the financial year (net write-off) in public sector banks (PSBs) was Rs 1.18 lakh crore in the financial year (FY) 2017-18, which has declined to 0.91 lakh crore in FY 2021-22 and to Rs 0.84 lakh crore (RBI provisional data) in FY 2022-23, he said in another reply.

Net write-off loans by private sector banks stood at Rs 73,803 crore (RBI provisional data) in FY 2022-23, he said.

Net write-off as percentage of opening gross loans and advances in private sector banks was 1.25% and 1.57% in FY 2017-18 and FY 2022-23 respectively, and it was 2% and 1.12% for PSBs during the same period, PTI reported.

Comprehensive steps have been taken by the government and RBI to recover and to bring down NPAs, enabled by which, gross NPAs of PSBs have declined to Rs 4.28 lakh crore as on March 31, 2023 from Rs 8.96 lakh crore as on March 31, 2018, Karad said.