India’s banking system will be among the last in the world to recover from disruptions caused by the covid-19 pandemic, a report by rating agency S&P has pointed out.

“For India, Mexico and South Africa, a recovery to pre-covid-19 levels may not arrive until after 2023,” the report said on 23 September. “We have taken negative rating actions on Indian banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) as operating conditions have deteriorated through the crisis. The country entered the pandemic with an overhang of high nonperforming assets.”

Private sector and state-run banks had an aggregate bad loan burden of ₹8.42 trillion as on 30 June, showed data from Capitaline.

According to the report titled “Global banking: recovery will stretch to 2023 and beyond”, recovery of banking jurisdictions will be slow, uncertain, and highly variable across sectors and geographies. Many prominent banking systems may not recover until 2023, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia.

The impact of the pandemic and an ensuing lockdown in March, left millions without jobs in India as the economy came to a near-grinding halt. However, the growth of infections continues unabated even as the economy is gradually reopening. S&P said as on 21 September, covid-19 infections in China were under 100,000 and was much lower than Brazil (4.5 million), India (5.4 million), and Russia (1.1 million), citing Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.

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