new delhi banks are flush with liquidity but there are no credit demands from the private sector amidst coronavirus crisis a senior state bank of india sbi official said on tuesdayhowever the lenders at this juncture still have to be prudent in their lending decisions and cannot be reckless sujit varma deputy managing director corporate finance state bank of india said while addressing a webinarour chairman has mentioned that wherever there is a bankable proposal we are willing to fund that which we keep on saying as well sbi being the largest bank i can tell you that we are always willing and we are ready to play our part and extend that support to help the economy and various industries he saidthere is a general perception that banks are increasingly becoming risk averse he said adding that one of the analysts mentioned that banks have actually moved from being risk averse to riskphobicmore on covid19coronavirus pandemic complete coveragelockdown 30 whats allowed and whats not in the three zonesits time to mask up and stay safe join tois maskindia campaignmhas guidelines for home isolationtrust the newspaper for your daily verified newsthe webinar was organised by the phd chamber of commerce and industry on corporate finance emerging issues challenges and opportunities during covid19he said there is a complete lack of fresh investments by businessestoday what we see that there is no demand for credit from the private sector other than the working capital requirements varma saidon the other hand it is also true that banks today are flush with liquidity he addedthe banks on an average are parking rs 67 lakh crore to the reverse repo window of the rbi where they earn interest because banks do not see any credit offtake according to himhe said the real contradictory situation is at one hand there is flush liquidity and on the other there lack of credit demandmy personal view is that banks i am not just talking about sbi i am talking about the whole banking system that we will have to do prudent lending at this juncture there is absolutely no chance banks will have to lend and they will have to lend prudently i dont think it is fair to expect from the banks to lend recklessly varma saidthe sbi official said that the present situation is entirely different from the 201112 global financial crisis when lending by banks had gone up significantly on the back of governments fiscal stimulus packagehe however said we will continue to do prudent lendingtalking about the banking industry he said even if the banks stop taking lending decisions become completely risk averse even then the credit profile and npa non performing assets or bad loans will riseso i think its not a choice i think banks sooner or later will have to take that call i think that mesage has gone not just from the government but also from the indian banks association and i think banks will be little more proactive