After opening the day in green, share markets in India witnessed choppy trading activity and are presently trading flat. Sectoral indices are trading mixed with stocks in the pharma sector and stocks in the consumer durables sector trading in red. While stocks in the realty sector are trading in green.

The BSE Sensex is down by 25 points (down 0.1%) and the NSE Nifty is trading down by 4 points (down 0.1%). Meanwhile, the BSE Mid Cap index is trading up by 0.6%, while the BSE Small Cap index is trading up by 0.7%. The rupee is trading at 64.20 to the US$.

In news about the economy. In a major step, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come out with new rules for dealing with bad loans.

Starting February 23, banks must immediately identify the defaults and make disclosures every Friday to the RBI credit registry.

The RBI, however, clarified these timelines do not apply to accounts where insolvency action has already been initiated at the insistence of the central bank.

In addition, the central bank withdrew a host of norms such as strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) among others and made the process time-bound.

The Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) as an institutional mechanism for resolution of stressed accounts also stands discontinued.

The new rules stipulate that starting 1 March, lenders must implement a resolution plan within 180 days for accounts of at least Rs 20 billion.

All four restructuring schemes were available earlier when IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) was not in place. The revised norms are a more transparent system for resolution.

Last year, the government had given more powers to the RBI to push banks to deal with non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans.

Gross NPAs of public sector and private sector banks as on September 30, 2017, were Rs 7,340 billion and Rs 1,029 billion respectively.