A report from CRISIL indicates that about 75 percent of companies availing moratorium may be low rated entities and mostly mid-sized businesses. In another report, ICRA indicates that 5 to 8 percent of total bank loans may need to be restructured. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, CRISIL Ratings’ Subodh Rai said that more than 2,300 companies have opted for the moratorium.
“2,300 companies or slightly more than that have taken moratorium and 75 percent of these companies are in sub-investment grade. When it comes to slippages, there are companies with decent liquidity, but they also took moratorium because they wanted to conserve liquidity to meet any contingency and then there are companies who have opted for a moratorium because they had a genuine need. So, it is essentially the second bunch of companies where you may see some slippages,” he said.
However, further added that RBI has announced debt restructuring and that one needs to factor that to assess slippages. “RBI has just announced debt restructuring. We have to see how many of these companies eventually opt for debt restructuring, how many of these companies get debt restructuring from banks, and then we will get a final picture of what will be the slippages,” he said.
However, Rai believes that about Rs 1.5 lakh crore could slip from the rated universe of debt. “In terms of amount of rated debt, average borrowing size for these companies is around Rs 25-30 crore. It is not very large borrowing. So, the quantum is not going to be pretty high though the number of companies will be very high. So, from debt at risk perspective, this number will be close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore,” he said.
Karthik Srinivasan, Group Head—Financial Sector Ratings, ICRA said, “If we were to look at various numbers shared by banks and NBFCs over the last month, month and a half, the moratorium numbers vary anywhere between 8-9 percent at one end to about 40-45 percent on the other end.”
“Our assessment is at a system level possibly the weighted average moratorium would be in the vicinity of about 20-25 percent and it may have come down today,” he added.
On NPAs, Srinivasan said, “How much would actually slip over 2 years would depend on how well the structuring package is worked out for these entities. So, while one definitely acknowledges the stress in most of these sectors, but before jumping onto to actual accounts slipping into NPAs, I think we could wait for another week or two till we get clarity from the expert committee on parameters that they are setting and how the loans are actually restructured by the lenders.”
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