America
Stalled projects being micro-monitored for revival: Jaitley
San Francisco, June 23
The government is minutely monitoring the stalled projects in a move to
enable a pick-up in industrial growth, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
has said.
"Micro attention is being paid to stalled projects and a
pick-up in that area would be helping demand for industrial products,"
Jaitley said at a meeting here on Monday with US companies operating in
India.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that co-hosted
the event with the US-India Business Council said in a statement on
Tuesday that companies at the meeting included Microsoft, Amazon,
Oracle, Hewitt Packard, Visa, Franklin Templeton, Google, Cisco, First
Solar, Ebay, Qualcomm, Blackberry and San Disk among others.
"The
monsoon prediction is improving and with it the prospects of the
agriculture sector doing better, which would put the economic growth
prospects on an even better footing," the finance minister said.
Jaitley
earlier this month said the finance ministry is currently preparing a
list of projects stalled due to lack of finance to set in motion the
process of their revival and thus bring down the non-performing assets,
or distressed loans, of banks.
"Many stalled projects have
started. The secretary, department of financial services, in
consultation with others, will prepare a list of projects stalled
because of finance," Jaitley then told reporters in New Delhi after
meeting with the heads of public and private sector banks.
"We
will deal with these stalled projects directly. We will call
representatives of state governments, of the projects and the
departments concerned over the next few weeks," he said.
Gross
non-performing assets, or distressed loans, of state-run banks have gone
up to Rs.260,531 crore as in December 2014. In the fourth quarter of
January to March 2015, NPAs had come down from 5.64 to 5.2 percent.
As
per the ministry's Economic Survey published before February's union
budget, stalled projects as in December-end amounted to Rs.880,000
crore-worth.
The finance minister, accompanied by a high-power
business delegation, is on a 10-day visit to the US, where his itinerary
embraces New York, Washington and San Francisco.