The top 30 bad loans in each commercial bank are responsible for almost half of the gross non performing accounts (NPA) in the Indian banking system. The worst affected are foreign banks in the country where the top 30 non-performing loans account for 84% of the gross NPAs as on March 2013.

In case of state-run banks, it is Bank of India where the top 30 NPAs account for 73.4% of the gross NPA for the bank at end of March 2013. The gross NPA to gross advance ratio of PSBs has improved to 3.38% in March 2013 as against 3.69% at the end of December 2012. In his review meeting with bank chairmen, finance minister P Chidambaram said that he has also directed banks to focus on their top 30 performing and non performing accounts.

"If you focus on the top defaulters as well as keep an eye on the top performing accounts the banks balance sheets will improve sharply," he said, adding that it was observed that it was the 30 top non performing accounts which account for the bulk of NPAs and in fact it is the borrower who has borrowed more than Rs 1 crore who accounts for the bulk of the NPAs. There are 9,324 accounts in state run banks with NPA of Rs 1 crore amounting to a total bad loan of 1.8 lakh crore at the end of March 2013.

"They (banks) are keeping a close watch on the top 30 non performing accounts in each banks and action will be taken to recover especially when there is a case of wilful default," he said.

For public sector banks the top 30 NPAs worth Rs 61,123 crore constitute for 39.7% of the gross NPAs. Besides Bank of India, the other nine state run banks where the top 30 NPAs are above 50% of gross NPAs include Andhra Bank, Punjab & Sind bank, United Bank of India, Corporation Bank, Indian Bank, Vijaya Bank, UCO bank and State Bank of Hyderabad.

In case of new private sector banks, the top 30 NPAs worth around ,114 crore constitute 34.6% of gross NPAs, while for old private sector banks it is 66.4% of gross NPAs.

The finance minister said that banks have been directed to recover more what they write off during the year. "I have impressed upon them that they must recover, actual recovery plus recovery from written off assets, must be higher than what they write off during the year," he said adding that banks have assured him that recovery from written off assets more than what is written off from the books. (Economic Times)