FM Arun Jaitley says govt should cut political interference in state banks

The government needs to minimise political interference in public sector banks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday, as the government announced measures to improve the performance of state-run banks that are struggling with rising bad loans.

Country's banking sector, dominated by more than two-dozen state-run lenders, has been hobbled by its highest bad-loan ratio in a decade as slower economic expansion hurt companies' ability to service debt.

While the pace of additions to bad loans has started slowing for most banks, higher provisioning is hurting their profits. State-run lenders also account for a majority of the sector's bad loans.

(Reuters)