Beena Parmar Moneycontrol News
The pace of increase in non-performing assets (NPAs) has been the highest in the first quarter as compared to the last five quarters. NPAs grew 16.6 percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis to reach Rs 829,338 crore as of June 2017.
The NPA ratio of 38 banks increased to 10.21 percent in June 2017 from 8.42 percent in June 2016, which is the highest in the last six quarters, according to a data report compiled by Care Ratings.
This pace of growth in June last year was 8.1 percent, while in September 2016, December 2016 and March 2017, the growth was at 5.4 percent, 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
Among public sector banks, the top 2 banks, namely IDBI Bank (24.11 percent NPA ratio) and Indian Overseas Bank (23.6 percent) have NPA ratios of over 20 percent while Indian Bank is the public sector lender with lowest ratio of 7.21 percent as on June this year.
“Public sector banks appear to be definitely more stressed than private banks… One of the major challenges for the Indian banking system is to address the NPA issue which has also affected the profitability of banks besides coming in the way of future bank lending as banks have been cautious while lending especially for long term purposes,” the report by Madan Sabnavis, chief economist and Darshini Kansara, research analyst with Care Ratings said.
With top five banks accounting for nearly half or 47 percent of the NPA share, country’s largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI) accounted for the largest share of about 22.7 percent in the total NPAs during the quarter. SBI’s gross NPAs stood at Rs 188,068 crore as of June 2017.
According to the report, top 5 banks together – SBI, PNB, BOI, IDBI, BOB account for a share of 47.4 percent totaling to Rs 393,154 crore while top 12 banks account for 75.7 percent NPA share.
Of the 12 banks, 11 are public sector banks (PSBs) with the exception being ICICI Bank, which accounts for about 5.2 percent share in the total NPAs during the quarter.
Among top 15 banks, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank are the only private sector banks with a combined NPA share of 7.9 percent.
Across all banks, Yes Bank is the only bank with an NPA ratio of just less than 1 at 0.97 percent.
It said that while it was largely expected that the NPA ratios would have settled by March 2017 as there were indications of stabilisation relative to December 2017, the picture emerging for Q1- FY18 is that the NPAs have deteriorated further for the system as whole.
Bankers are hoping the resolution through the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code may help erase the larger pain on the NPA front.
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