RBI Gives a Covid Spin to Cash Touching Pre-Demonetisation Levels

We live in an era of narratives. Politicians create them. Corporates create them. Social activists create them. Commentators, public intellectuals, economists and analysts also create them. And there are days when we are even lying to ourselves in our heads and creating narratives for ourselves.

In all this, it is hardly surprising that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), with Shaktikanta Das at its helm, has also padded up and gotten into the business of narratives and spin. Before I explain this in detail, let me give you some background to this piece.

In November 2016, the central government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The citizens had to deposit these notes into their bank accounts. The result was that 86% of the currency by value suddenly went out of the financial system.

Paper money has different uses, but its main use is as a medium of exchange. It basically facilitates the process of buying and selling. Of course, if people want to, the process of exchange can be carried out through other means like issuing a cheque, making a demand draft, carrying out a money transfer or even paying money digitally.

But India back in 2016 was a country which believed in operating in cash. When the cash went out of the system, the economic transactions especially in the informal sector took a beating. The gravity of the situation never really came out fully, except perhaps anecdotally, given that the government data collection for the informal part of the economic system was and continues to remain abysmal. I guess, which is why it is called an informal sector in the first place.

Between November 2016 and now, I have closely tracked the total amount currency in circulation gradually increasing. Of course, as the economy expands, the currency in circulation is bound to go up. In order to take care of this, the data that needs to be tracked is the currency in circulation divided by the gross domestic product (GDP), expressed as a percentage. (I will refer to this as cash in the system). The GDP is the measure of the size of any economy. The cash in the system basically adjusts for the size of the economy.

My contention over the years has been that the cash in the system will eventually rise to touch the pre-demonetisation level. Earlier this year, in April 2020, writing in the Mint, I had said: “The cash in the system [as of March 2020] works out to 12% of GDP.” I had made this calculation on the basis of the currency in circulation as of March 27 and the GDP forecast for 2019-20 (up until then, the actual GDP numbers were yet to come in).

A formal confirmation of this came yesterday with the RBI  releasing its annual report. In the annual report, the RBI says: “The currency-GDP ratio increased to its pre-demonetisation level of 12.0 per cent in 2019- 20 from 11.3 per cent a year ago, indicating the rise in cash-intensity in the economy in response to the pandemic [emphasis added].” The currency in circulation constitutes of cash with banks and cash with the public.

Before analysing this statement, let’s look at the following figure, which plots the currency in circulation to the GDP ratio or the cash in the system, over the years.

Cash in the System


Source: Reserve Bank of India.

In March 2017, a few months after demonetisation was carried out and after the whole country had queued up to deposit the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes into their bank accounts, the cash in the system fell to 8.7% of the GDP.

The reason for this was very straightforward; the government and the RBI couldn’t replace the cash in the system at the same pace as they had taken it out. There were all kinds of problems, including banks having to reset ATM trays in order to take care of the smaller size of the new notes.

As of March 2020, the cash in the system is back to 12% of the GDP, which is at an almost similar level of 12.1% of the GDP as of March 2016, before demonetisation was carried out. The RBI feels this has happened because there has been a dash for cash in light of the spread of the covid-19 pandemic. People hoarded on to more cash than they normally do and this led to a faster rise in the cash in the system than it normally would have.

The point to be remembered here is that we are talking cash in the system as of March 2020 and not August 2020. At that point of time, people had just started to take covid-19 seriously. Let’s take a look at the monthly increase/decrease in currency in circulation during the course of 2019-20.

Changes in currency in circulation


Source: Author calculations on data from Reserve Bank of India.

It is very obvious from the above chart that at Rs 99,040 crore, the maximum monthly increase in cash in the system during the year, happened in March 2020. Does this then imply that there was a dash for cash as the fear of the pandemic spread? In order to say this with surety we will have to look at weekly increase in cash levels in the system during the course of March 2020.

Dash for Cash?


Source: Author calculations on Reserve Bank of India data.

India went into a physical lockdown starting March 24, 2020. It is only around then that most of the country realised the gravity of the pandemic. This can be seen by increase in cash in the system in the week ending March 27. This implies a higher than normal increase in currency with public with a higher withdrawal of money from the banking system than would have been the case if all was well.

But the bulk of the increased withdrawals in March had happened before March 20. Close to 62% of the withdrawals in March (at Rs 61,354 crore) had happened before March 20. Interestingly, up until then the fear of the pandemic hadn’t really spread. This weakens the entire dash for cash argument.

Let’s say if things had gone on normally then it is safe to say that the increase cash in the system in March would have been around 80-85% of what it eventually got to. At this level of increase, the cash in the system as of March end would have been around 11.95% of the GDP, which is not significantly different from 12.03% of the GDP, it eventually came to. The RBI’s dash for cash argument hangs on a few basis points.

Even if assume, that increase in the cash in the system in March 2020 was at around 60% of the actual number, the cash in the system would have worked out to 11.84% of the GDP, which is slightly lower than 12.03% of the GDP. And even at 11.84% of the GDP, the cash in the system would have been higher than where it was as of March 2019, and would have continued to go up, as it has since November 2016. This is the more important point.

While India of November 2016 was a country which believed in operating in cash, so is the India of March 2020. Yes, digital transactions have gone up along the way and that’s a good thing. But that could have happened anyway without putting the country through the trouble that demonetisation did.

Also, it is time we realised that people don’t store their black money in cash. In fact, data from a White Paper on black money published in May 2012 showed that around 4.9% of the total undisclosed income admitted to during search and seizure operations between 2006 and 2012 was held in the form of cash. Cracking down on black money is much more complicated operation than just cracking down on cash in the system.

Further, societies with more cash aren’t necessarily more corrupt. If that was the case Japan with a cash in the system of around 20% of the GDP would be more corrupt than India. On the flip side, Nigeria which has a cash in the system comparable to that of Norway, wouldn’t be a country as corrupt as it is. The government needs to make peace with this fact.

To conclude, I think one reason the RBI might have resorted to this spin and is trying to create a narrative, lies in the fact that when demonetisation was carried out, the current RBI governor Shaktikanta Das was the finance secretary.

My guess is that a part of Das still wants to justify demonetisation as a good thing and show it by telling the nation that the cash in the system rose to the pre-demo level simply because of the Covid-19 pandemic, something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

But as I showed above that is a very weak argument. It is time the RBI sang a different tune on this front and moved a dash for cash to Das for cash.

Six Months After Demonetisation Cash is King Again and Questions Still Remain

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On November 8, 2016, the prime minister Narendra Modi announced his government’s decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, to an unsuspecting nation. The decision came into effect from the midnight between November 8 and November 9, 2016, and suddenly rendered 86.4 per cent of the nation’s currency in circulation, useless.

It’s been six months since then and more than four months since December 30, 2016, the last date for depositing the demonetised Rs 500 an Rs 1,000 notes, into bank accounts. But even after this period as far as the government is concerned, a few basic points remain.

a) How much demonetised money finally made it into bank accounts? When demonetisation was first announced, this number was shared regularly. Nevertheless, the last announcement on this front from the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) came on December 13, 2016. As of December 10, 2016, Rs 12.44 lakh crore of demonetised currency had made it back into the banks.
Given that Rs 15.44 lakh crore worth of currency notes had been demonetised, nearly 80.6 per cent of the currency had found its way back into banks, nearly three weeks before the last date to deposit demonetised notes into bank accounts.
Neither the Reserve Bank nor the government has told the nation how much money eventually made it back into the banks. This is an important question and needs to be answered.

b) The initial idea behind demonetisation was to curb fake currency notes and eliminate black money.
As far as fake currency goes the minister of state for finance Arjun Ram Meghwal told the Lok Sabha in early February 2017 that the total number of fake notes deducted in the currency deposited into banks after demonetisation stood at 2.46 lakhs. This amounted to a total value of Rs 19.5 crore.
As mentioned earlier, the total value of demonetised notes had stood at Rs 15.44 lakh crore. Given this, the proportion of fake notes deducted is almost zero and can be ignored. Hence, as far as detecting and eliminating fake notes was concerned, demonetisation was a total flop.
How did it do as far as eliminating black money is concerned? The hope was that the black money held in the form of cash will not make it back into the banks, as people wouldn’t want to get caught by declaring it. But by December 10, 2016, more than four-fifth of the demonetised notes had already made it back into the banks. Since then the government and the RBI have not given out any fresh numbers. It’s surprising that it has been more than four months since December 30, 2016, and this number is still not out in the public domain.
Also, it is important to point out here: “High denomination notes are known to facilitate generation of black money. In this connection, it may be noted that while the total number of bank notes in circulation rose by 40% between 2011 and 2016, the increase in number of notes of Rs.500/- denomination was 76% and for Rs.1,000/- denomination was 109% during this period.”
If high denomination notes facilitate generation of black money, then why replace Rs 1,000 notes with Rs 2,000 notes. Given that a Rs 2,000 note is twice the value of a Rs 1,000 note, it makes black market transactions even more easier. It also makes storage of black money in the form of cash easier, given that it takes less space to hide the same amount of money.
Again, this is a basic disconnect in what the government planned to achieve through demonetisation and what it eventually did. No effort has been made to correct this disconnect.

c) The government has still not offered a good explanation of what prompted it to demonetise. There has been no similar decision taken by any other country in a stable financial situation like India currently is, in the modern era. The best that the government has done is blamed it on the RBI. As Meghwal told the Lok Sabha in early February 2017: “RBI held a meeting of its Central Board on November 8, 2016. The agenda of the meeting, inter-alia, included the item: “Memorandum on existing banknotes in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 – Legal Tender Status.””
Anybody who has studied the history of the RBI would know that the RBI would never take such an extreme step without extreme pressure from the government.

d) Other than eliminating black money and fake currency notes through demonetisation, in the aftermath of demonetisation, the government wanted to promote cashless transactions. As Modi said in the November 2016 edition of themann ki baat radio programme: “The great task that the country wants to accomplish today is the realisation of our dream of a ‘Cashless Society’. It is true that a hundred percent cashless society is not possible. But why should India not make a beginning in creating a ‘less-cash society’? Once we embark on our journey to create a ‘less-cash society’, the goal of ‘cashless society’ will not remain very far.”

How are things looking on that front? Look at the following table. It shows the volume of digital transactions over the last few months.

MonthVolume of digital transactions (in million)
Nov-16671.5
Dec-16957.5
Jan-17870.4
Feb-17763.0
Mar-17893.9
Apr-17843.5

Source: Reserve Bank of India

While digital transactions picked up in December, they have fallen since then. The total number of digital transactions in April 2017 is higher than it was in November 2016. Nevertheless, it is worth asking, whether this jump of 25 per cent was really worth the trouble of demonetisation.

e) Falling digital transactions since December 2016 tell us that cash as a mode of payment is back in the system. There is another way this can be shown. Between November 2016 and February 2017, banks barely gave out any home loans. During the period, the banks gave out home loans worth Rs 8,851 crore. In March 2017, they gave out total home loans of Rs 39,952 crore, which was 4.5 times the home loans given out in the previous four months. It also amounted to 35 per cent of the home loans given out during the course of 2016-2017.

A major reason why people weren’t taking on home loans between November 2016 and February 2017 was demonetisation. There simply wasn’t enough currency going around. With this, the real estate transactions came to a standstill because without currency it wasn’t possible to fulfil the black part of the real estate transaction. Those who owned homes (builders and investors) were not ready to sell homes, without being paid for a certain part of the price, in black.

By March 2017, nearly three-fourths of the demonetised currency was replaced. This basically means that by March 2017, there was enough currency in the financial system for the black part of the real estate transactions to start happening all over again. Also, the Rs 2,000 note makes this even more convenient.

To conclude, six months after the declaration of demonetisation it is safe to say that demonetisation has failed to achieve what it set out to achieve i.e. if it set out to achieve anything on the economic front.

The column originally appeared on Firstpost on May 9, 2017

Viral Acharya is Right About Re-privatising Public Sector Banks

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Late last week Viral Acharya, a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said: “Perhaps re-privatising some of the nationalised banks is an idea whose time has come … this would reduce the overall money government needs to inject as bank capital.”

Regular readers of the Diary would know that we have said several times in the past that public sector banks should be privatised and the government should get out of the banking business, which it is clearly inept at.

Of course, the question is why has Acharya used the term re-privatising rather than privatising. Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 private banks on July 19, 1969. These banks had deposits of Rs 50 crore or more and among them accounted for 90 per cent of the banking business in the country. The funny thing is that at the time this happened, the then RBI governor LK Jha had no clue about it.

As TCA Srinivasa Raghavan writes in Dialogue of the Deaf—The Government and the RBI: “Volume three of RBI’s official history says that on July 17 she [Indira Gandhi] asked LK Jha, the RBI governor to come over to Delhi. Jha thought he was being asked to discuss social control and he took with him a comprehensive note on the subject. When he offered it to Mrs Gandhi she told him ‘that he could keep the note on her table and go to the next room and help in drafting the legislation on nationalising the banks.’”

In 1980, six other private banks were nationalised. This time the recommendation came from the then RBI governor, IG Patel.

Now getting back to what Acharya said, re-privatising is something we have advocated in the past. And it makes sense at multiple levels. We now have nearly two decades of evidence that suggests that the new generation private sector banks which were first set up in the mid-1990s, are much more efficiently run than their public-sector counterparts. Yes, there have been cases like the Global Trust Bank, but on the whole private banks are better run than their public sector counterparts. Even the old generation private sector banks, which are very small, are reasonably well run.

Take the case of the bad loans situation that currently plagues the Indian banking sector in general and the public sector banks in particular. As on December 31, 2016, the total bad loans of the public sector banks (gross non-performing assets (NPAs)) had stood at around Rs 6.46 lakh crore.

For the private sector banks, the same number stood at Rs 86,124 crore. Of this, two banks, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, accounted for bad loans of Rs 58,184 crore. Of course, given that public sector banks give out more loans, it is not surprising that their bad loans are more.

The total loans of public sector banks are 2.9 times the total loans of private sector banks. But their bad loans are 7.5 times that of private banks. If both these set of banks were equally well run, then the two ratios just referred to, wouldn’t have been different.

Between 2013-2014 and 2015-2016, the total net profit made by the public sector banks stood at Rs 56,567 crore and that of private banks stood at Rs 1,13,801 crore. This, even though public sector banks are significantly bigger than India’s private banks.

These data points tell us that India’s public sector banks are inefficiently run. And this inefficiency has cost the government a lot of money over the years. Between 2009 and March 2017, the government has had to invest close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore in these banks to keep recapitalising their capital, in order to keep them going.

Indeed, this is a lot of money and could have gone towards other worthy causes. The basic problem with public sector banks is political meddling. Every government has its favourite set of industrialists and this ultimately leads to the public sector banks and in the process the taxpayer, picking up the bill for this politician-businessman nexus.

As Acharya writes in a paper titled Is State Ownership in the Indian Banking Sector Desirable?: “One, state ownership creates severe moral hazard of directing bank lending for politically expedient goals and of bailouts when such lending goes bad. Second, state ownership restricts the ability of state-owned banks from raising arm’s length capital against state’s stake, strangling their growth and keeping these banks—and certainly their private capital base—smaller than it need be.”

What does this mean in simple English? The economist Alan Blinder in his book After the Music Stopped writes that the “central idea behind moral hazard is that people who are well insured against some risk are less likely to take pains (and incur costs) to avoid it.” Hence, managers of government owned banks know that if loans given to businessmen close to politicians go bad, the government will ultimately pick up the tab by recapitalising the public sector bank to an adequate extent. Hence, they go easy on giving loans to borrowers who are likely to default. Of course, there is always the threat of transfers, which works very well. This has happened for years at end.

Secondly, given that the government has to continue owning a certain proportion of shareholding in these banks, the banks cannot raise as much capital as they require. They have to continue to be dependent on the government for capital. And the government of course does not have an unlimited amount of cash. This limits the ability of the government owned banks to raise as much capital as they may require at any point of time.

So, what are the actual chances of the government re-privatising some of the public sector banks, as suggested by Acharya? Zero. While Acharya, I and others, might think that the basic problem with public sector banks is government ownership, politicians don’t think so. This comes from the belief that if you own banks then you can direct lending to areas that you want to. But this as we have seen comes with its own set of costs.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on May 3, 2017.

Will RBI’s Latest Rescue Act Clean the Mess in Public Sector Banks?

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Late last week, the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) unleashed yet another weapon to clean up the mess that India’s public sector banks are in. The RBI reviewed and revised the preventive corrective action (PCA) framework for banks.

At a very simplistic level, the PCA framework essentially will restrict the ability of any bank to go about their normal business, in case they don’t meet certain performance parameters. The idea is to ensure that banks do not get into a further mess.

The RBI has basically set three risk levels for the PCA framework to kick-in. Take the case of bad loans or net non-performing assets(NPAs) of banks. (NPAs are essentially loans which borrowers have defaulted on and are no longer repaying. These NPAs are referred to as gross NPAs. Against, the gross NPAs, the banks set aside a sum of money referred to as provisions. Once these provisions are subtracted from gross NPAs what remains are net NPAs).

Let’s say the net NPA of a bank is greater than or equal to 6 per cent but less than 9 per cent. In this case, the bank will face a restriction on dividend distribution. This is the first risk level of the PCA framework. In case, the net NPA is greater than or equal to 9 per cent and less than 12 per cent, along with dividend restrictions the bank will also face a restriction on branch expansion and at the same time will have to increase its provisions or the money it sets asides against gross NPAs. This is the second risk level of the PCA framework.

If the net NPA is greater than or equal to 12 per cent, then along with the dividend restrictions, restrictions on bank expansion, greater provisioning, the banks will have to limit the management compensation and directors’ fees. This is the third risk level of the PCA framework.

Along with net NPAs, the other performance parameters that the RBI plans to take a look at as a part of the PCA framework are the capital adequacy ratio, return on assets and the leverage of the bank. If the bank does not meet the RBI set levels of these parameters, the actions highlighted above will kick-in.

Over and above this, there are other actions that can kick-in. These include:

  1. Special audit of the bank
  2. A detailed review of business model in terms of sustainability of the business model of the bank.
  3. RBI to actively engage with the bank’s Board on various aspects as considered appropriate.
  4. RBI to recommend to owners (Government/ promoters/ parent of foreign bank branch) to bring in new management/ Board.
  5. RBI to supersede the Board.
  6. Reduction in exposure to high risk sectors to conserve capital.
  7. Preparation of time bound plan and commitment for reduction of stock of NPAs.
  8. Preparation of and commitment to plan for containing generation of fresh NPAs.
  9. Strengthening of loan review mechanism.
  10. Restriction of staff expansion.
  11. Restrictions on entering into new lines of business.
  12. Restrictions on accessing/ renewing wholesale deposits/ costly deposits/ certificates of deposits.
  13. Reduction in loan concentrations; in identified sectors, industries or borrowers.

If you look at the above actions, other than the RBI superseding the board of the bank, the other steps are more or less what any bank which is in trouble would undertake. The question is will the PCA unravel the mess that the Indian banks, in particular the government owned public sector banks, are currently in.

The biggest problem for the public sector banks has been the fact that their gross NPAs have been increasing at a very rapid rate. Between December 2014 and December 2016, the gross NPAs of public sector banks increased by 137 per cent to Rs 6.46 lakh crore.

What is the reason for this huge and sudden increase in gross NPAs? A major reason lies in the fact that banks have been recognising their bad loans as bad loans at a very slow speed. The question is the recognition of bad loans as bad loans over? Have all bad loans been recognised as bad loans? Or are banks still resorting to accounting gimmicks and postponing the recognition of bad loans? This is a question which only the banks or the RBI can answer.

The most important step in cleaning up the balance sheets of Indian banks is ensuring that all the bad loans have been recognised as bad loans. A problem can be solved only after it’s properly identified. The tendency not recognise bad loans as bad loans and project a financial picture which is incorrect needs to end.

The second biggest problem for Indian banks has been the poor recovery rate of bad loans (i.e. net NPAs in this case). Data from RBI shows that in 2015-2016, the recovery rate fell to 10.3 per cent of the net NPAs. In 2014-2015, it was at 12.4 per cent. In 2013-2014 and 2012-2013, the recovery rates were even better at 18.4 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively.

This basically means that the ability of banks to recover bad loans has gone down over the years. Will the PCA framework be able to help on this count? It doesn’t seem so. A greater portion of the bad loans need to be recovered from corporate India. As the Economic Survey points out: “The stressed debt is heavily concentrated in large companies.” Hence, any major recovery from large companies will need a lot of political will something, which is something the RBI cannot do anything about.

The PCA framework will kick-in depending on the performance of banks as on March 31, 2017. But taking the net NPA numbers as on December 31, 2016, how does the scene look like for public sector banks? There are 21 public sector banks which currently have a net NPA ratio of greater than 6 per cent. Hence, the PCA framework will apply to all of these banks. The first risk level of the PCA framework will apply to all these banks.

Of these ten banks have an NPA of greater than 9 per cent. The second risk level of the PCA framework will apply to these banks. Two banks have an NPA of greater than 12 per cent. The Indian Overseas Bank is the worst of the lot at 14.3 per cent. The State Bank of Patiala came in next as of December 2016. This bank has since been merged with the State Bank of India.

The PCA framework will essentially limit the ability of these banks to carry out business and hence, limit further damage to the bank and the financial system.

Nevertheless, there is no way the framework will clear up the mess that these banks are in. For that what is needed is a lot of political will to go after corporates and recover the bad loans that are outstanding. The question is do we have that kind of political will?

The column originally appeared on Firstpost on April 19, 2017 

Public Sector Banking is Now in a Bigger Mess

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The break at writing the Diary turned out to be much longer than I had expected. The main reason for it will become obvious in the days to come.

A lot has happened during this period, including the Modi government’s defence of demonetisation, which has grown by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, I thought of giving writing on demonetisation a break for the first piece for the Diary in 2017.

One thing that has got side-lined in the entire discussion on demonetisation is the fact that Indian public sector banks continue to remain in a mess. In fact, as we shall see the mess has only grown bigger in the recent past. As the RBI Financial Stability Report for December 2016 points out: “The stress on banking sector, particularly the public sector banks (PSBs) remain significant… PSBs as a group continued to record losses.”

The gross non-performing assets ratio or the bad loans of the PSBs, increased to 11.8 per cent as on September 30, 2016. This is a whopping increase
220 basis points from 9.6 per cent as of March 31, 2016. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage.

The overall stressed assets of public sector banks jumped to 15.8 per cent of total loans. It had stood at 14.9 per cent as on March 31, 2016.

The stressed asset figure of 15.8 per cent was obtained by adding bad loans of 11.8 per cent with restructured assets of 4 per cent. This basically means that for every Rs 100 that the PSBs have given out as a loan, Rs 15.8 are in a dodgy territory, on an average.

Out of every Rs 100 of loans made by the banks, borrowers have stopped repaying loans worth Rs 11.8. Over and above that loans worth Rs 4 for every Rs 100 of loans given by the banks have been restructured. A restructured loan essentially implies that the borrower has been given a moratorium during which he does not have to repay the principal amount. In some cases, even the interest need not be paid. In some other cases, the tenure of the loan has been increased.

This is clearly a reason to worry. Nevertheless, there is a small good sign here as well. Unlike earlier, when banks were using the restructuring route to not recognise bad loans, that doesn’t seem to be happening much now. As on March 31, 2016, the restructured loans had stood at 4.9 per cent of total loans. This has fallen to 4 per cent of total loans as of September 30, 2016. Banks are now recognising bad loans as bad loans. The first step towards solving a problem is recognising that it exists.

The increase in bad loans of public sector banks can also be seen in the bad loans figure of large borrowers. The Reserve Bank of India categorises large borrowers as borrowers with an outstanding loan amount of Rs 5 crore or more. The Financial Stability Report points out: “The large borrowers registered significant deterioration in their asset quality.”

However, the report does not mention a clear bad loans figure for the large borrowers. As the RBI Financial Stability Report for June 2016 pointed out: “The gross non-performing assets(GNPA) ratio of large borrowers increased sharply from 7.0 per cent to 10.6 per cent during September 2015 to March 2016.” This basically means that as on September 30, 2016, the gross non-performing assets ratio or the bad loans of banks would have stood at greater than 10.6 per cent.

If we look at Figure 1, the bad loans ratio for the large borrowers seems to be greater than 15 per cent as of September 30, 2016.

Figure 1:

 

This basically means that the large borrowers are the ones who continue to create problems for public sector banks. Take a look at Figure 2.

Figure 2:

The large borrowers form 56.5 per cent of the total loans given by banks. Nonetheless, they form 88.4 per cent of the total bad loans of banks. And this is where the basic trouble is. The rate of recovery of bad loans by banks is also not good enough.

As a recent report in The Indian Express points out: “The rate of recovery of non-performing assets (NPAs) was 10.3 per cent, or Rs 22,800 crore, out of the total NPAs of Rs 221,400 crore during fiscal ended March 2016, against Rs 30,800 crore (12.4 per cent) of the total amount of Rs 248,200 crore reported in March 2015, data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said.”

Indeed, what is worrying is that the RBI points out that the bad loans of the PSBs could increase further. As the report points out: “Among the bank groups, PSBs may continue to register the highest GNPA ratio. Under baseline scenario, the PSBs’ GNPA ratio may increase to 12.5 per cent in March 2017 and then to 12.9 per cent in March 2018 from 11.8 per cent in September 2016, which could increase further under a severe stress scenario.”

Interestingly, the June 2016 Financial Stability Report had pointed out: “Among the bank-groups, PSBs may continue to register the highest GNPA ratio. Under the baseline scenario, their GNPA ratio may go up to 10.1 per cent by March 2017 from 9.6 per cent as of March 2016. However, under a severe stress scenario, it may increase to 11.0 per cent by March 2017.”

We have already crossed the severe stress level in September 2016, something which was forecast only for March 2017. This basically means that the government will have to keep pumping more and more capital into these banks in the years to come in order to keep them going. And that means a lot more money of taxpayers will essentially go down the drain.

Postscript: I would like to thank all readers who supported my recent petition to the President. I am in the process of planning the dispatch of the responses received to the President.

The column was originally published on Equitymaster on January 11, 2017