Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla, in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, informed that Indian banks reported a total loss of about ₹70,000 crore due to frauds during the last three fiscals up to March 2018.
The loss suffered by scheduled commercials banks (SCBs) was ₹36,694 crore in 2017-18, ₹16,652 crore in 2016-17 and ₹16,409 crore in 2015-16.
Replying to another question, he said as per RBI data, there were 139 borrowers with aggregate gross NPAs of more than ₹1,000 crore.
Banks are reeling under the weight of huge losses and non-performing assets (NPAs), due to which banks have written off a record Rs. 1,44,093 crore of bad loans in 2017-18. In the previous year, the bad loans amounted to Rs. 89,048 crore. Of the total amount written-off in 2017-18, Rs. 1,20,165 crore were written off by public sector banks.
Since 2009, the total loan write-off by private and state-owned banks has reached a whopping Rs. 4,80,093 crore as on March 31, 2018. Out of this, Rs. 400,548 crore was from public sector banks.
Earlier in June, the Congress had alleged that the banking scams under the Modi government had crossed Rs. 70,000 crore.
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“Today we are presenting another bank scam worth ₹7000Cr. Criminal conspiracy and fraud by Faridabad-based company SRS Group, has resulted in 113 cases registered against them,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.
He further said that whistleblowers presented a list of 251 shell companies which were used for money laundering by the SRS group, but till date, no concrete action has been taken by the government.
Stating Indian banks’ Q4 losses for 2017-18 to be Rs. 90,000 crore, Surjewala drew a comparison between NPAs which were Rs. Rs 2,63,000 crore in 2013-14 and are now Rs 10,30,000 crore.
He further said that IDBI Bank’s Q4 losses have amounted to Rs. 5,663 crore and its NPAs amount to Rs. 55588.26 crore, making it the worst performing public sector bank.