PNB says over 1,700 wilful defaulters owe bank Rs 37,020 cr; Mehul Choksi's companies top of the list

Winsome Diamond & Jewellery, Gitanjali Gems and ABG Shipyard are among the big wilful defaulters who together owe more than Rs 37,000 crore to Punjab National Bank (PNB) as of the end of the first quarter of 2020-21. As many as 1,787 big willful defaulters owe outstanding loans of Rs 37,020.27 crore at the end of June, according to the list of wilful defaulters with outstanding of Rs 25 lakh and above as of 30 June uploaded on the PNB website. Leading the chart is Mehul Choksi-promoted Gitanjali Gems Ltd with an outstanding loan of Rs 5,064.84 crore. Gili India and Nakshatra Brands, which were also part of the Gitanjali Group, owed Rs 1,447 crore and Rs 1,109 crore each to the country’s second largest state-owned lender. Jatin Mehta-promoted Winsome Diamond & Jewellery Ltd owed Rs 1,036.85 crore while ABG Shipyard Ltd had outstanding loan Rs 1,193.37 crore at the end of June 30, 2020, the list showed. Chandigarh-based chemical manufacturer Kudos Chemie Ltd with an outstanding loan of Rs 1,418 crore is among wilful defaulters who owe more than Rs 1,000 crore to the bank. Among others, Vijay Mallya-promoted Kingfisher Airlines has outstanding loan of Rs 522.48 crore, Zoom Developers Rs 702 crore; Jas Infrastructure and Power Ltd Rs 453.96 crore; and Sterling Global Oil Resources Limited has Rs 755 crore. All these companies were provided loans by PNB as part of consortium lending. The bank has a committee consisting of the managing director and two board members for the review of identification of wilful defaulters and non cooperative borrowers classification. For the quarter ended March 2020, the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of the bank declined to 14.21 per cent of gross advances as against 15.50 per cent in March 2019. Net NPAs or bad loans also came down to 5.78 percent as against 6.56 per cent in the year-ago period. In absolute value, gross NPAs stood at Rs 73,478.76 crore at the end of 2019-20, lower than Rs 78,472.70 crore reported in the previous fiscal. Similarly, Net NPAs were valued at Rs 27,218.89 crore as against Rs 30,037.66 crore. As a result of improvement in asset quality, the provisioning for bad loans during the March quarter almost halved to Rs 4,618.27 crore compared to Rs 9,153.55 crore.