Reacting to the rising incidence of NPAs in urban cooperative banks, as revealed in the recently concluded RBI Surveys, Sahakar Bharati says that despite its constant warning, the issue was not dealt with properly by the govt.
In a statement, Sahakar Bharati says cooperative banks were hit harder by the pandemic compared to other lenders during the 2nd wave of the pandemic, and yet no Emergency Credit Line was made available to MSME units of UCBs leading to stress in the co-op banking sector.
It also says that all its pleas before the government fell on deaf ears.
According to an RBI study, the gross non-performing assets ratio of all urban cooperative banks rose to 15.4% as of September 2021. The gross NPA ratio stood at 11.7% as of March 2021 and 10.6% as of March 2020.
Scheduled UCBs saw bad loans rise to 12.4% as of September compared with 10.3% six months before. Non-scheduled UCBs saw a much sharper spike in bad loans to 18% from 12.8% over this period.