Public sector banks' bad loans rose more than 200% in 3 yrs: Govt

Bad loans in public sector banks more than tripled to about Rs 2.17 lakh crore in three years to March 2014, the government said in Parliament on Tuesday.

NPAs (non-performing assets) of the banks have increased during the last few years. Gross NPAs of the public sector banks increased from Rs 71,080 crore in 2011 to Rs 2,16,739 crore as on March 31, 2014, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

Earlier this year, the government had organised a confluence of PSU banks in Pune to discuss about on banks' differential strategic funds, capacity building, technology enabled transformation and strengthening risk management among others.

The minister said government and Reserve Bank have taken a number of steps to address the issue of NPAs in public sector banks. The government has already decided to establish six new Debt Recovery Tribunals to speed up the recovery of bad loans of the banking sector, he said.

Also, as per earlier directive, banks need to start acting as soon as a sign of stress is noticed in a borrower's account and not to let it become an NPA. In reply to a separate question on unclaimed deposits which are more than 10 years old, Sinha said as much as Rs 5,124.98 crore was lying as unclaimed as of December 31, 2013.

He said a Depositor Education and Awareness Fund has been created by RBI to create awareness about unclaimed deposits. Any account with any bank which has not been operated upon for a period of 10 years or any deposit or any amount remaining unclaimed for more than 10 years should be deposited to this fund.