Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that big defaulters are responsible for higher NPAs of banks and recovery of money from these big people has become a big challenge.

Commenting on the issue, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the media, "Wherever small borrowers are taking loans from banks, there is lesser NPA. NPA is low where smaller amount of loans taken for agricultural and smaller businesses and even in MUDRA scheme, the NPAs are at miniscule scale.”

"Whatever big NPAs are there in the big banks, that are not because of small people, but because of big people (defaulters) and today it has become a challenge how to recover that money from these people," said Jaitley.

The finance minister further said that when these big loans were given to these defaulters, the thinking then might have been different.

The Finance Minister added that bank plays an important role in the growth of the country as it offers loans to businesses, farming and students for education purpose, but if the banks's capacity to offer the loans gets affected because some big people are sitting on the loans, the growth, not only of rural sector, but of the entire country gets affected.