Recovery of money from big people has become a big challenge: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday blamed the big defaulters for higher NPAs of banks, adding that recovery of money from these "big people" has become a "big challenge".

Jaitley was in city to attend the centenary completion celebrations of Pune District Central Co-operative Bank (PDCC). NCP chief Sharad Pawar is associated with this bank for last 50 years.

"Wherever small borrowers are taking loans from banks, there is lesser NPA. NPA is low where smaller amount of loans taken for agricultural and smaller businesses and even in MUDRA scheme, the NPAs are at miniscule scale.

"Whatever big NPAs are there in the big banks, that are not because of small people, but because of big people (defaulters) and today it has become a challenge how to recover that money from these people," said Jaitley.

His statement came after NCP chief, who has been associated with the bank for last 50 years, mentioned in his speech that PDCC has zero per cent NPA.

The finance minister added that when these big loans were given to these defaulters, the thinking then might have been different.

The Finance Minister added that bank plays an important role in the growth of the country as it offers loans to businesses, farming and students for education purpose, but if the banks's capacity to offer the loans gets affected because some big people are sitting on the loans, the growth, not only of rural sector, but of the entire country gets affected.

"For the first time, government is taking steps to take these big people to insolvency so that the recovery can be done and that money can be utilised for the growth of the rural sector," he said.

Jaitley lauded the efforts of PDCC and its administrators and members for sustained good performance of the bank and said that the model of PDCC should be replicated in other parts of the country.

PTI