Opinion | What ails the Indian banking sector?
Live MintThe past two years or so have seen rapidly increasing stress in the Indian banking sector, with non-performing assets steadily climbing from under 3% to over 13% of total assets. Prior to that, Indian banks mainly had two types of loans: working capital loans to production entities, firms, and farmers ; and retail term loans to households for housing, and durable goods. The NPA problem has arisen from four features that characterised bank loans for fixed capital formation: Banks do not have the capacity to assess long-term credit-worthiness of borrowers. The global financial crisis in 2008-09 required banks to take substantial further exposures in long-term loans as external commercial borrowings by Indian corporates dried up. First, if banks are required to issue bonds to finance a part of their term loans, it would lead to a much more rational yield curve on bank loans since the interest rate on bonds would be significantly higher than that on deposits.