Punjab National Bank declares 900 firms as wilful defaulters that owe Rs 11,000 crore

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) has declared a list of about 900 wilful defaulters including Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery, Zoom Developers and Nafed, which owe close to Rs 11,000 crore to the lender.

The bank recently declared beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines and its guarantors UB Holdings and Vijay Mallya as a wilful defaulters. Kingfisher Airlines owes Rs 1,500 crore to PNB.

The bank has declared 904 entities as wilful defaulters with outstanding loan of Rs 10,869.71 crore at the end of December.

As per the list put out by PNB, some of the prominent defaulters include Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery which owes Rs 900.37 crore, followed by Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds Rs 747.98 crore, Zoom Developers Rs 410.18 crore, Nafed Rs 224.26 crore and S Kumar Nationwide Rs 146.82 crore.

As part of its balance sheet clean-up exercise, PNB plans to sell up to Rs 3,000-crore worth of bad loans to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) in the ongoing 4th quarter of the current fiscal.

"PNB was one bank which was away from this (ARCs) market and did not tap this market in the last six years," PNB Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian had told PTI.

Besides, the bank is organising special camps for recovery at various places, she said.

The bank is also looking at one-time settlement proposals and other measures to reduce bad loans.

For the third quarter ended December 31, 2015-16, PNB's asset quality deteriorated and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose to 8.47 per cent of the gross advances as against 5.97 per cent in the same quarter a year ago.

Likewise, net NPAs rose to 5.86% of the advances as of December quarter of 2015-16, from 3.82% in the year-ago period.

In absolute terms, the gross NPAs increased to Rs 34,338.22 crore as of December quarter, from Rs 22,211.43 crore. Net NPAs were at Rs 22,983.40 crore during the quarter, up from Rs 13,787.76 crore.

As a result, the bank's provision against bad loans increased sharply to Rs 2,867 crore during the quarter as compared to Rs 1,976 crore in the same period, a year ago.

Those who have the capacity must return their bank loans in the larger interest of the country, Ananthasubramanian had said recently.

"Wilful defaulters also block your (banks as well as general public) access to finance," she had said.