State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) has declared 904 borrowers who owed it a combined Rs.10,869.71 crore as of December-end as wilful defaulters. The bank added 140 companies to the list of wilful defaulters over the last quarter. At the end of September, 764 companies who owed the lender Rs.9,200 crore had been classified as wilful defaulters.

Prominent among the wilful defaulters to PNB are Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery, which owes Rs.900.37 crore, Forever Precious Jewellery and Diamonds (Rs.747.98 crore), Zoom Developers (Rs.410.18 crore), Nafed (Rs.224.26 crore) and S. Kumar Nationwide (Rs.146.82 crore). The bank recently declared Kingfisher Airlines and its guarantors UB Holdings and Vijay Mallya as wilful defaulters. Kingfisher Airlines owes PNB Rs.1,500 crore.

For the third quarter ended 31 December 2015, PNB’s asset quality deteriorated and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose to 8.47% of gross advances as against 5.97% in the same quarter a year ago.

NPA

The assets of the banks which don’t  bring any return are called Non Performing Assets (NPA) or bad loans. According to RBI, terms loans on which interest or installment of principal remain overdue for a period of more than 90 days from the end of a particular quarter is called a Non-performing Asset.