Finance Minister has expressed serious concern over the recovery of Non-Performance Assets (NPA) and directed the Public Sector Undertaking Banks (PSU) to speed up their realization.

He also asked them to set up a separate vertical in the banks, headed by an officer of the rank of a General Manager, for recovery of NPAs. Addressing a news conference in New Delhi this afternoon, Mr P Chidambaram said his ministry is monitoring top 30 NPA accounts in each public sector bank.

He said Each NPA account with more than one crore rupees will be under watch, particularly those written off accounts. Earlier, Mr Chidambaram reviewed the performance of the banks with the Chief Executives.

The Finance Minister said the PSU banks will open 10,000 new branches and set up 34,668 on-site ATMs during the current financial year. He said the ban on the import of gold coins and medallions to continue and asked the banks to scrupulously check gold imports.

Mr Chidambaram said 176 new project proposals worth 250 crore rupees each had been approved by Cabinet Committee on Investment prior to 31st of March this year. Of them, 137 proposals with a total investment of over 4 lakh 64 thousand crore have been either cleared or in the advance stage of clearance.

The Finance Minister said the public sector banks have received a total of 173 new project proposals with an estimated investment of over 3 lakh 24 thousand crore rupees were between April to September this year.He said these proposals are being processed.