Harish Puppala | Rakesh Sharma
Moneycontrol Contributor
2018 was a difficult year for banks – their reputations suffered massively after it came to light that most of them had large NPAs, sins they committed knowingly. One year prior, in 2017-18, the gross NPA ratio of all scheduled commercial banks reached 11.2percent of the gross advances, up from 9.3 percent a year before. Public sector banks, which account for nearly 70percent of the advances, saw gross NPA ratios rise to 14.6 percent due to, and I quote the RBI here, restructured advances slipping into NPAs and better NPA recognition. Better NPA recognition is, of course a fancy way of saying that banks got caught for the bad loans they gave out.