Loans worth ₹11,700 crore given by State Bank of India are locked up as non-performing assets as nearly 1,160 defaulters have wilfully decided not to repay.

The bank had identified 1,164 cases of wilful default with total outstanding loan amount of ₹11,705 crore, as on September 2015, according to data collated by the Finance Ministry.

Besides, the bank had declared beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines and its guarantors UB Holdings and Vijay Mallya as wilful defaulters in November. Kingfisher Airlines owes ₹1,600 crore to SBI.

Status of associates

Among its five associates, State Bank of Hyderabad has the highest number with 197 wilful defaulters (as on September 2015), with outstanding loan of ₹2,088 crore.

It is followed by State Bank of Patiala with 124 wilful defaulters owing ₹1,328 crore. Its biggest subsidiary State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur is struggling with bad loans of ₹829 crore in the hands of 43 wilful defaulters.

State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore have 66 and 65 wilful defaulters in their lists, respectively. In terms of absolute amounts, it is ₹974 crore and ₹839 crore, respectively.

SBI’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans soared to ₹72,791.73 crore at the end of the December quarter from ₹61,991.45 crore a year earlier.

The mounting pressure due to bad loans hit profitability of the SBI as its consolidated profit plunged 67 per cent to ₹1,259.49 crore for the quarter on account of higher provisioning for bad loans.

Reeling under stressed assets, state-owned banks’ third quarter performance can at best be described as dismal, with Bank of Baroda reporting a loss of over ₹3,342 crore, the highest from any bank so far.

Faced with huge NPAs, SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya had said bad loans are expected to surge in the coming quarter, which may hit its profitability.

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