Banking Sector in India

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
I. Introduction
The banking industry has undergone a sea change after the first phase of economic liberalization in 1991 and hence credit management. While the primary function of banks is to lend funds as loans to various sectors such as agriculture, industry, personal loans, housing loans etc., in recent times the banks have become very cautious in extending loans. The reason being mounting non-performing assets (NPAs). An NPA is defined as a loan asset, which has ceased to generate any income for a bank whether in the form of interest or principal repayment. As per the prudential norms suggested by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a bank cannot book interest on an NPA on accrual basis. In other words, such interests can be booked only when it has been actually received. Therefore, an NPA account not only reduces profitability of banks by provisioning in the profit and loss account, but their carrying cost is also increased which results in excess & avoidable management attention. Apart from this, a high level of NPA also puts strain on a banks net worth because banks are under pressure to maintain a desired level of Capital Adequacy and in the absence of comfortable profit level, banks eventually look towards their internal financial strength to fulfill the norms thereby slowly eroding the net worth.

II.

Literature Review
When a borrower, who is under a liability to pay to secured creditors, makes any default in repayment of secured debt or any installment thereof, the account of borrower is classified as nonperforming assets (NPA) .NPAs cannot be used for any productive purposes because they reflect the application of scarce capital and credit funds. Continued growth in NPA threatens the repayment capacity of the banks and erodes the confidence reposed by them in the banks. In fact high level of NPAs has an adverse impact on the financial strength of the banks who in the present era of globalization, are required to conform to... [continues]

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