It goes without saying that the proposed “loan melas” are bound to be a headache for the government in the near future. One fails to see the rationale behind the Finance Minister saying that no MSME-stressed loan would be classified as a non-performing asset till March 31, 2020. Such loan melas were held under the Congress regime and turned out to be a damp squib. It is no wonder then that these loans turned out to be the bad debts and the banks concerned were asked to write them off in order to present a rosy picture of balance sheets.
S.K. Gupta,
New Delhi
The lending of soft loans with undesirable relaxations in lending norms of banks could prove to be disastrous to the banking industry which is already in turmoil. The aggressive campaign and loan melas by commercial banks could push people even with weak financial profiles to become the debtors and eventually become defaulters that can only add to mounting non-performing assets. Banks will become the casualty. The stimulus packages and soft loans to boost the economy can be termed piecemeal solutions at best.
N. Sadhasiva Reddy,
Bengaluru
