Camouflaging NPAs and inflating the profits is very common in all banks and this was the reason  the Global Trust Bank had to close down and had to be merged with Oriental Bank of commerce in the year 2004. The banks auditors and management are hand in glove with each other in window dressing of banks balance sheets and this seldom gets detected or if get noticed get ignored often. The stakeholders have absolutely no clue of what happens and RBI's findings seldom get reported or made transparent. What has happened in Axis Bank may be true for almost all the banks and prudence demands that all banks' financial position with RBI's divergence if any should be made transparent for the benefit of all stakeholders. Besides, how the banks fix lending rates to various corporate borrowers , retail borrowers and to what extent the policy rates have been actually transmitted into the final lending rates of banks also should be made transparent for the benefit of investors. To what  extent the lending rates if NPAs are maintained at a reasonable level can be reduced also should be indicated in banks balance sheets as and when published.

        

      Dr T V Gopalakrishnan

      ( This comment was given in Money Life against the article Axis Bank tumbles over 9% as asset quality worsens dated 18/10/2017).