NABARD has said the regional rural banks (RRBs) will be able to maintain their gross non-performing assets this fiscal at the last year’s level of 6% and will improve it to 5% by the end of June. NABARD chairman H.K. Bhanwala said all the 57 RRBs as a whole will have gross NPAs of 6%, the same as that on March 2013. These banks have also been given targets to improve it to 5% in the next three-four months. The gross NPA ratio of RRBs rose to 6.08% as of March 2013 as against 5.03% in the year-ago period and 3.75% in FY2010-11. The outstanding books of the RRBs had stood at over Rs 1.37 trillion in March 2013, of which Rs 1.02 trillion were to the agriculture and allied sectors. Bhanwala said the process of migrating to the core banking solution has been completed at all the RRBs and added for the next fiscal, they have been asked to focus on installing ATMs at those branches which witness over 100 transactions per day.
