New Delhi, September 25: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has advised the banks to take all steps to ensure clean lending and effective action in cases of fraud and willful default. While addressing the heads of the public sector banks on Tuesday, The finance minister has asked the banks to justify the trust reposed by people. Jaitley also directed the banks to strive to be always seen as institutions of clean and prudent lending.

The meeting was held to discuss a number of issues, including the progress made in bringing down non-performing assets (NPAs) on the bank books. It was the second such meeting conducted since April as a part of the annual financial performance review exercise conducted for all public sector banks. The first meeting was held in June. Currently, Indian banks are suffering from bad loans of over Rs 6 lakh crore.

Today’s meeting was first such meeting after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had announced to merge three public sector banks -- Bank of Baroda (BoB), Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank. The merger was announced to create a global-sized lender. As per media report, the government is also planning to merge Punjab National Bank (PNB), Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) and Andhra Bank, and this merger could be announced before the end of this year.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 25, 2018 04:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).