There is often a lot of debate on the fact that the loans of industrialists are waived off but farmers commit suicide due to debt. The present central government has also been criticized many times for waiving off the huge loans of big industrialists. Now, in response to a question asked in the Parliament, it has been revealed that in the last five years, almost 2.7 times more loans of big industrialists or companies have been written off than the loans of farmers. In the last 5 years, a total of Rs 4.39 lakh crore has been written off, out of which Rs 3.20 crore loan is of big companies only. Government banks are at the forefront in waiving off loans, which have written off a total of Rs 3.18 lakh crore.
There is often a lot of debate on the fact that the loans of industrialists are waived off but farmers commit suicide due to debt. The present central government has also been criticized many times for waiving off the huge loans of big industrialists. Now, in response to a question asked in the Parliament, it has been revealed that in the last five years, almost 2.7 times more loans of big industrialists or companies have been written off than the loans of farmers. In the last 5 years, a total of Rs 4.39 lakh crore has been written off, out of which Rs 3.20 crore loan is of big companies only. Government banks are at the forefront in waiving off loans, which have written off a total of Rs 3.18 lakh crore.
It’s important to clarify here that there’s a difference between a loan write-off and a loan waiver. A loan waiver means the loan will never have to be repaid. A write-off, on the other hand, means that banks remove the loan from their balance sheets and write it off as a loss. This debt is also recovered through various processes. In May 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that in the previous nine years, the central government had recovered ₹10 lakh crore in such loans.
Now, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MP Sant Balbir Singh has asked a question in Parliament regarding this . He asked how many industrialists’ and farmers’ loans have been waived or written off in the last five years. He also requested state-wise and sector-wise data. However, the Parliamentary response stated that state-wise and sector-wise data are not maintained. However, the Finance Ministry stated that data is available by year and by bank.
What do the figures say?
The Reserve Bank of India maintains records on how much debt is written off by each bank. The Finance Ministry reiterated in its response that a write-off does not constitute a loan waiver and does not provide any relief to the borrower. According to the RBI, it is merely an accounting process used to correct balance sheets. Furthermore, banks continue to pursue recovery of such loans.
Now let’s look at the statistics. The data shows a shift in the number of loan write-offs over the past five years. While the number of loans written off by industrialists has decreased, the number of loans written off by farmers has increased.
This trend has been observed in both public and private banks. However, a tremendous increase has been seen in loan write-offs in small finance banks. While in the year 2021-22, small finance banks wrote off loans of only Rs 8 crore of big companies, in 2025-26 this amount increased to Rs 271 crore. Similarly, small finance banks wrote off loans of Rs 515 crore of agriculture sector in the year 2021-22, but in 2025-26 this amount reached Rs 2366 crore.
Whose debt was written off the most?
In the last 5 years, all banks have written off a total of Rs 3,20,481 crore of loans of big companies and Rs 1,18,984 crore of loans related to the agriculture sector. This means that 72 percent of the total loan write-offs are of loans of big companies and industrialists. Out of this, Rs 3.18 lakh crore loan has been written off by government banks, Rs 1.04 lakh crore by private banks, Rs 10961 crore by small finance banks and Rs 5908 crore by foreign banks.
These figures show that there has been a rapid decline in write-offs by foreign banks and in just five years, the figure has come down from Rs 1800 crore to just Rs 698 crore.