After Union Bank of India reported a 15 percent year-on-year rise in its third quarter net profit helped by a sharp fall in provisions, CMD Arun Tiwari is confident that the bank will continue to perform better quarter after quarter.
In an interview to CNBC-TV18’s Gopika Gopakumar, Tiwari says the Rs 1154 crore slippages for December 2013 is likely to taper down as the asset quality of the bank looks quite good and the stressed assets can be controlled and monitored directly from the central office. Therefore, Tiwari does not feel any stress and believes the worst is over for the public sector lender.Below is the verbatim transcript of Arun Tiwari’s interview on CNBC-TV18Q: What’s the expectation going ahead?
A: We will continue to be outliers. Also, change of guard will not happen in Union Bank. One, asset quality is good, team is good and they know their job. They are very conscious about corporate goals and I am certain the way they have responded during this quarter, they will continue to respond in the same way in the coming quarters as well. Going forward, despite whatever happens to the economy, Union Bank of India will continue to perform better quarter after quarter.
Q: What is the NPA situation now? How much were the gross slippages and the gross restructuring? Going forward, what kind of pipeline are you looking at?
A: The slippages during December 2013 quarter was Rs 1154 crore. If we compare that with previous quarter i.e. Q2, it was Rs 1657 crore and in the quarter before that was close to Rs 1500 crore. Going forward, this number will taper down for the simple reason, one, the asset quality book is quite good and two, the redeeming factor is where we don’t have a direct control from the central office or the zonal office that is the smaller loans.
There are not much slippages there. Stressed assets can be controlled and monitored directly from the central office. So, I am pretty sure – we have gone to the accounts of Rs 1-5 crore of different buckets and going forward, we don’t feel any pressure. Therefore, I say it confidently that worst is at our back.
Q: Could we see any shocks from large accounts because most other banks are sounding very cautious on the asset quality going forward? Can we expect any kind of shocks from large accounts going forward?
A: We have one large account. It is not a large group per se from the country. The kind of security we are sitting on there, I am 200 percent sure that in the worse case scenario it would be restructured but it would never go non-performing.
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