Some of biggest NPAs originated between 2006-2008 under Congress rule: BJP's Sanju Verma

New Delhi, Dec 12 (IANS) Some of the biggest NPAs originated between 2006 and 2008 under the UPA rule and the "incompetent Congress" has also been responsible for some of India's biggest Non-Performing Assets, BJP national spokesperson and economist, Sanju Verma, said on Thursday.

Verma told IANS that this fact has already been conveyed by Rahul Gandhi’s “dear friend and the Congress Party's poster-boy, Raghuram Rajan”.

“I am not a fan of Rajan but for once, he spoke the truth when he said that 2006-2008 was the period when the banking system saw its back broken by large corporates who had the power to get loans merely by making a phone call to South block or North Block system,” she emphasised.

Rebutting Rahul Gandhi’s “lies against India's banking system,” Verma said that India's public sector banks have actually hired more than 3.94 lakh people in the last 10 years alone.

Rahul Gandhi’s claim that India's banking system is reeling under NPAs is not true and today, public sector banks have gross NPA to the tune of barely 3 per cent and net NPAs to the tune of barely 1.2 per cent.

“NPAs under the PM Modi government have fallen dramatically,” said Verma.

In the last 10 years, 54 crore Jan Dhan accounts and more than 52 crore collateral-free loans under various flagship financial inclusion schemes (PM MUDRA, Stand-Up India, PM-SVANidhi, PM Vishwakarma) have been sanctioned.

“And the biggest beneficiaries were not big corporates, but small-ticket businesses. They were marginal farmers. They were women, the youth entrepreneurs. In fact, 68 per cent of all PM MUDRA beneficiaries are women, 44 per cent of all PM-SVANidhi beneficiaries are women and 67 per cent of the PM Vishwakarma scheme are women,” said Verma.

In fact, unarguably, India is the only major economy which did not see any bank going bust post the COVID-19 pandemic, as large global banks collapsed. she said.

“India's banks are thriving, not just surviving. They are in good shape. And that's great news. Rahul Gandhi needs to realise that India is not just the world's fifth largest economy but is on its way to becoming the fourth largest in January 2025, by overtaking Japan, and we should be seeing a GDP size of close to $4.34 trillion, growing at the rate as we are,” Verma told IANS.