On Thursday, Punjab National Bank reported a 76 per cent decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 282 crore in the June quarter, mainly due to higher provisioning for bad loans and decline in interest income.
The bank had posted a net profit of Rs 1,023.46 crore in the year-ago period. Total income in the first quarter of the current fiscal fell to Rs 21,294 crore. In the year-ago period, it was at Rs 22,515 crore, according to a regulatory filing. The lender’s interest income fell to Rs 18,757 crore from Rs 18,921 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
The gross Non Performing Assets (NPAs) declined to 11.2 per cent of the gross advances by June 2022 from 14.33 per cent a year ago. It was at 11.78 per cent as of March 2022. In absolute terms, the gross NPAs or bad loans stood at Rs 90,167.10 crore at the end of the first quarter of FY23 compared to Rs 1,04,075.56 crore a year earlier. The net NPA too declined to 4.26 as against 5.84 per cent in the same period of the previous year.
However, provisions for bad loans increased to Rs 4,814 crore in the April-June FY23 as against Rs 3,248 crore in the year-ago period. As on June this year, the Provisioning Coverage Ratio stood at 83.04 per cent as compared to 80.26 per cent at the end of June 2021.
“Covid-19 pandemic has adversely impacted the economic activity across the globe, including the Indian economy for more than two years. The bank’s results, operations and asset quality, however, have not been much affected because of the pandemic,” it said.