New Delhi, April 1 -- Early detection of potential defaults has lowered fresh accretion of non-performing assets by public sector banks to below 1% of their standard advances compared to 8.35% in March 2018, the period that saw a surge in NPAs after an asset quality review that unearthed bad loans hidden in their books, according to government data.
After the bank clean-up exercise was undertaken in 2015 -- starting with the Reserve Bank of India's asset quality review (AQR) and followed by the government's 4R's strategy -- gross NPAs of public sector bank (PSBs) fell to Rs.3.02 lakh crore in December 2024 from a peak of Rs.8.96 lakh crore on March 31, 2018. The government's decision to stop evergreening of bad loans led to an AQR exercise...