SBI to sell NPAs worth Rs. 5000 crore to asset reconstruction firms
PrintListen to this Article
For the first time in its over two centuries of history, State Bank of India (SBI) is going all out to stem the rot by offloading around Rs.5,000 crore of its Rs. 67,799 crore dud assets to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) before the end of the month.
"There are 14 ARCs functioning today, and we have invited many of them to pick up our stressed loans of around Rs. 5,000 crore. We will definitely be offloading at least a large portion of this to the highest bidders. The process should be concluded before the end of the month," a senior SBI official told PTI in Mumbai on Monday.
India's largest lender had reported 5.73 per cent of its assets as bad loans in the quarter ended December, 2013.
The move comes ahead of tighter provisioning norms kicking in from next April, which the Reserve Bank of India had in May last year announced when it had more than doubled the provisioning for restructured loans to 5 from 2 per cent.
Earlier this month, chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya had said in Kolkata that "the bank was considering a proposal to sell NPAs in the current quarter".
"This would be for the first time we would be selling NPAs to asset reconstruction companies or ARCs." But she did not specify how much the bank was planning to offload.
Normally, ARCs pay for 5-10 per cent of the total bad loans being bought in cash and the rest could be security receipts (SRs), the SBI official cited earlier said, adding the lender is confident of selling a good portion of the dud loans earmarked for offloading.
In the quarter to December alone, the lender had added as much asRs. 11,400 crore in fresh bad loans or 5.73 per cent, taking its overall NPAs mount to a whopping Rs. 67,799 crore. This pulled down its net profit by a whopping 34 per cent to Rs. Rs. 2,234 crore, as the bank was forced to make Rs. 3,428.6 crore towards loan provisions up from Rs.2,766 crore a year ago.
The bank added Rs. 11,400 crore in fresh slippages - including Rs.9,500 crore from SMEs and mid-corporates - and added Rs. 6,165 crore into the restructured loan book during the quarter, while a cleaning up of balance sheet resulted in a write-off of around Rs.5,000 crore in the third quarter.
The bank is also expecting at least Rs. 9,500 crore of loans being restructured in the fourth quarter.
As of the December quarter, as much as Rs. 67,799 crore of its Rs.11,83,723 crore assets or advances as classified as NPAs, or 5.73 per cent up from Rs. 64,206 crore or 5.64 per cent in the previous quarter. While its net NPAs stood at Rs. 37,167 crore, or 3.24 per cent, in Q3 and Rs. 32,151 crore, or 2.91 per cent, in the previous quarter when its total net NPAs were at Rs. 11,39,326 crore.
Media reports said banks, mostly state-run, are scurrying to sell close to Rs. 43,000 crore to ARCs by the end of the month as the total bad assets in the system rose to 4.1 per cent of the total advances. This is almost four times the amount that was put up for auctions in the past quarter.
The urgency of bans come as the apex bank under its new Governor, Raghuram Rajan, has been encouraging lenders to clean up their books.
In his inaugural address on September 4, Mr Rajan had famously said that promoters of failed companies have no divine right to remain in control of such companies.
The rush to offload bad loans is also to guard them against higher loan loss provisions that kick in from next March, by when all restructured loans would be classified as non-performing accounts attracting higher provisions.
On May 30 last year, the RBI had tightened the norms for loan restructuring norms by raising provisions to 5 per cent in line with the global practices, in a gradual manner.
As per the RBI notification, provisioning on the newly restructured account was raised to 5 per cent from June 1, 2013 from 2 per cent. However, for the old CRD accounts it would be done in a phased manner till April 2015.
What was more important was that the RBI had said the existing "regulatory forbearance" would no longer be available from April 1, 2015, therefore the urgency of banks to offload bad loans now.
As per existing guidelines, an account after restructuring is not classified as NPA. However, as per the new norms, restructured account would be treated as NPA.
The RBI had also said promoters of companies seeking corporate debt restructuring (CDR) should bring in at least 20 per cent of banks' sacrifice or 2 per cent of the restructured debt as fresh equity. (PTI)
Category : Bank | Comments : 0 | Hits : 825
TEST
The country's largest lender State Bank of India on Tuesday reported about Rs 12,000 crore divergence in their bad loans for the last fiscal.As per the assessment done by the RBI, the gross NPA of SBI was Rs 11,932 crore more at Rs 1,84,682 crore as against Rs 1,72,750 crore reported by the bank for 2018-19, SBI said in a regulatory filing. Similarly, the net NPA was Rs 77,827 crore as compared to disclosed figure of Rs 65,895 crore, reflecting divergence of Rs 11,932 crore, it said.As a ...
The Indian Banks’ Association is planning to lobby the government against an arbitrary tax notice which seeks to extract as much as Rs 40,000 crore from the country’s banks. In a notice served earlier this month, all banks were asked to pay service tax, penalties and interest on free services offered to customers. ET was the first to report the move in its April 24 edition. The demand is retrospective with a 12% service tax claimed since 2012, 18% interest on the amount and ...
Cash deposits of Rs15.39 crore made in a Delhi bank post demonetisation have been held as ‘benami’ property by a special court even as the depositor and the beneficial owner of the stash are “untraceable”. The deposits were declared ‘benami in the ruling in one of the first adjudication cases of the new anti-black money law. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government had brought into force the new Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 from No...
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought to prevail on the Centre to open a fresh window for exchange of scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes+ for people who missed the December 30 deadline, if they could establish that the money was theirs and they had a genuine reason for not changing it. The court was a step away from ensuring an exchange opportunity when the Centre sought two weeks to respond to the suggestion. The court's previous inquiries had so far failed to move the Centre. The gover...
Comments