Banks' stressed loans rise to Rs 9.64 lakh crore as of December

Indian banks had stressed loans of Rs 9,64,000 crore ($147.33 billion) as of end-December, Santosh Gangwar, minister of state for finance, told lawmakers on Friday.

As of end-September, the banks' total stressed loans were Rs 8,97,000 crore, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

This is a 7.5% growth in stressed loans from September to December end.

Stressed loans include bad loans and restructured or rolled over loans.

In June 2016, RBI's data has revealed that stressed loans have crossed $138 billion (approx Rs 8,71,746 crore)  in June 2016, an increase of 15% in just six months.

"I don't think a national bad bank is a bad idea. The Government and the regulators are coming up with various discussions as to how solve the issue relating to non-performing assets (NPAs) and that is necessary so that the banking system has the ability to do more. Bad bank is one of the ideas being discussed, there are other ideas like the Bankruptcy Code which should also help, we bankers are also working (on tacking NPA issue)," Aditya Puri, Managing Director and Chief Executive of HDFC Bank said recently at a conference in Mumbai.