Pay up or give up, FM Arun Jaitley warns defaulters

Cautioning corporate defaulters, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursdaysaid that non-payers would now have to either pay up or make way for new entrepreneurs as the new bankruptcy law had reversed the debtor-creditor relationship.

The message in the legislation is now loud and clear; debtors will have to make sure their debts are serviced. Hence, a very easy solution to suggest is tax payers must pay because the private sector has defaulted," he said, adding bank recapitalisation, where the government puts in more capital in public sector banks to shore up their books, effectively amounted to that.

As per an official reply given in the Rajya Sabha in the Monsoon session, the total advances to corporate sector in 2017 were around 18 lakh crore rupees and nearly 15% (14.83%) or 3.44 lakh crore rupees were declared as non perorming assets (NPAs).

As per the official reply in the Rajya Sabha, as on March 31, 2017 the gross NPAs of public sector banks in iron and steel sector alone was Rs. 165,661 crore and for power sector it was Rs.30,380 crore which is 56% of the total NPAs of advances given by the public sector banks to corporate sector.

Commenting on the Reserve Bank released report on demonetisation, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the fallout of note ban was on predicted lines and the economy will benefit in a medium and long term.

OneIndia News