Finance minister P. Chidambaram is slated to meet chiefs of public sector banks and financial institutions on Wednesday to review their performance. This will be the last meeting that the current government will have with the chiefs of PSBs/FIs as general elections will be held in April/May.
The meeting?s agenda includes the rising bad loans and efforts to recover them, efforts to ensure bank finance to stalled projects that were recently cleared by the government, employees? wage revision, the performance of the banks in credit growth with respect to credit to segments such as agriculture, MSME, housing, education and minority communities.
The minister will also take up the issue of capital adequacy, financial inclusion and new projects/proposals being taken up by the banks.
The meeting comes amid the probe into United Bank of India for alleged misreporting of bad loans. The gross non-performing assets (NPA), or bad loans, of PSBs went up from R1.55 lakh crore on March 31, 2013 to R2.03 lakh crore at September-end 2013.