The Punjab & Sind Bank reported a jump in its net profit to Rs 346 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2022. Total income during the quarter increased to Rs 2,007.90 crore as against Rs 1,940.62 crore in Q4 FY21, the bank said in a statement. In value terms, gross NPAs declined to Rs 8,565 crore by the end of FY22 as against Rs 9,334 crore a year ago. The latest quarterly bottomline performance was 15 per cent higher than the net profit of ₹301 crore recorded in the third quarter ended December 31, 2021.
For the entire fiscal 2021-22, PSB reported a net profit of ₹1,039 crore against the net loss of ₹2,733 crore in 2020-21, showed the public sector lender’s filings with the stock exchanges. The lender had net profit of Rs 161 crore in the year-ago period. Its profit before provisions too rose 72% on year to Rs 317 crore during the quarter. Commenting on the financial performance, S Krishnan, Managing Director & CEO, PSB said that the bank has been able to achieve robust recovery and also contain slippages during FY22. He also added that the bank would enhance its focus on retail credit, expects the credit growth of 8-10 per cent this fiscal.
The bank’s provisions for bad loans fell down significantly to Rs 866 crore in the quarter from Rs 1,993 crore in the year-ago period. S Krishnan said that the bank has been able to do a robust recovery and contain slippages during the year. He expects net interest margin to further improve by 5-10 basis points from the current level of 2.8 per cent. On interest rates, he said the bank has raised the lending rate following the increase in repo rate by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by 40 basis points earlier this month.
The gross non-performing assets (GNPA) of the PSB came down to 12.17 per cent of gross advances from a level of 13.76 per cent in end March 2021. Gross NPA in value terms declined to ₹8,565 crore by end March 2022 against ₹9,384 crore as of end March 2021. While the net NPAs as a percentage of advances fell to 2.74 per cent (₹1,742 crore) from 4.04 per cent (₹2,462 crore) a year ago.
The government of India’s holding in the bank has increased to 98.25 percent as of March 31, 2022. Going forward, S Krishnan said that the rate hike would depend on further tightening of the monetary policy by RBI.
