The Reserve Bank of India has been encouraging the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions by banks for enhancing their outreach with the help of their Business Correspondents. The BCs carry hand held devices, which are essentially smart card readers. The information captured is transmitted to a central server where the accounts are maintained.
The gross NPAs for the banking sector have increased from 2.4 per cent as on March 31, 2008 to 2.6 per cent as on September 30, 2009. In the context of the rising NPAs and the likely slippages in the restructured accounts, we had introduced the 70 per cent provisioning coverage ratio for NPAs as a forward looking requirement.