Apart from absolute size, the distribution of non-performing BIS Review 108/1998  –5–  assets is skewed across banks. Still a large number of public sector banks have net nonperforming assets ranging between 10 to 20% of net advances.
The Narasimham Committee has underlined the need to reduce the average level of net NPAs for all banks to 3% by 2002 and to zero for banks with international presence. I think this is an important requirement for our banking system and is crucial to maintaining the viability of the system in future.