Nirmala Sitharaman assures Public Sector Banks in good health, have enough liquidity

Addressing a press conference after a meeting with the chief managing directors of the PSU banks, Sitharaman maintained that the public sector banks have adequate liquidity.

“All public sector banks are now maintaining their regulatory capital, they have sufficient liquidity and therefore they are very robust," said Finance Secretary Rajeev Kumar.

He said loans worth Rs 81,781 crore were given across over 200 districts during the nine-day outreach programme or the loan mela, which began on Oct1 to Oct 9 and added that the new loans accounted for Rs 34,342 crores.

The second outreach programme will start from Oct 21 ahead of Diwali and will be continued for the next four days.

The Finance Minister said that efforts were being made to ensure that the MSMEs got their dues and the first step in that direction has been taken.

The large corporates owe Rs 40,000 crore to the MSMEs according to returns filed by MSMEs, Sitharaman said.

“The corporate affairs ministry has a complete list of companies which stated that they owe MSMEs nearly Rs 40,000 crore. Secretary corporate affairs and secretary banking will ensure that the data, in desegregated form, is given to these banks," she stated.

She said that the banks have agreed to reach out to all these MSMEs to do the bill discounting as the banks suffer the most from cash crunch during these drives.

On slowdown of economy, Sitharaman said that the government has not set any time-period but is in constant touch with the industry and related stakeholders.

In order increase the flow of credit in the system, last month, the Finance Minister had asked the banks and other lending institutions like microfinance institutions, small finance banks, and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) begin two-phased outreach programme covering 400 districts to give credit under categories like vehicles, MSMEs, agriculture.