Allahabad Bank Q3 net loss widens over 2-fold to Rs 1,986 cr

New Delhi: Allahabad Bank on Tuesday reported an over two-fold jump in standalone net loss for the December quarter at Rs 1,986.26 crore on higher bad loans and provisioning.

The state-owned lender had reported a net loss of Rs 732.81 crore in the corresponding October-December period of the previous fiscal.

Total income (standalone) during the quarter under review grew to Rs 4,860.35 crore from Rs 4,756.88 crore in the same period of 2018-19.

The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose to 18.93 per cent of the gross advances by the end of the December quarter as against 17.81 per cent earlier.

However, it was down sequentially from 19.05 per cent at the end of September 2019.

In value terms, the gross NPAs or bad loans rose to Rs 32,149.92 crore from Rs 28,218.79 crore a year ago.

Net NPAs, however, came down to 5.13 per cent (Rs 7,449.27 crore) from 7.70 per cent (Rs 10.865.26 crore), Allahabad Bank said.

Provisions for bad loans for the quarter increased to Rs 3,002.98 crore from Rs 1,900 crore a year ago, it said.

"The bank is carrying additional provision of Rs 1,801.26 crore over and above the provisions required to be made in terms of prudential norms issued by RBI, to ensure compliance with the PCA norms of net NPAs," the bank said.

The losses on consolidated basis too widened to Rs 1,980.82 crore for the quarter from Rs 746.83 crore in the year ago period. Income was higher at Rs 5,009.57 crore as against Rs 4,896.75 crore.

As a relief to MSME borrowers registered under GST, the Kolkata-headquartered lender said as many as 667 such accounts were restructured for an outstanding amount of Rs 348.13 crore. For the accounts covered under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the bank is holding provision of Rs 6,292.47 crore (100 per cent of total outstanding as on December 31, 2019). Agencies

Non-performing loan coverage ratio of the bank stood at 82.42 per cent as on December 31, 2019, it said.

The bank has reported gross and net NPA divergence of Rs 67 crore each for the last fiscal, as adjusted after the calculation done by the bank and assessment of the RBI.

The divergence in provisioning was Rs 453 crore for 2018-19, which included Rs 193 crore towards provisions for standard assets and additional provision of Rs 260 crore for NPAs, which had been duly accounted for in current fiscal and would require incremental provision of only Rs 75.34 crore in Q3 FY20, it added.

"Divergence in NPAs as on March '19 will not impact the gross NPAs and net NPAs during Q3 FY20 as the accounts underlying had already been marked as NPA and provided suitably in Q1FY20 itself," Allahabad Bank said.

The Alternate Mechanism, as advised by the finance ministry, has accorded in-principle approval to the proposed amalgamation of Allahabad Bank with Indian Bank.

"Up to nine month ended December 31, 2019; 390 operational fraud cases were reported involving a total amount of Rs 86.26 crore. Out of these accounts, the bank has recovered a total amount of Rs 19.22 crore. No provision is written back during the current quarter," it said further.

The Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) norms are triggered if a bank's net NPA crosses 6 per cent or if CRAR (capital to risk weighted assets ratio) is below the regulatory requirement of 10.88 per cent as of March 2019.

In FY19, RBI removed five banks -- Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Allahabad Bank and Corporation Bank -- from the PCA framework in two phases after capital support from the government that resulted in improvement in their financial parameters.

LIC-owned IDBI Bank still remains under the PCA watch. However, the bank is seeking a removal from the watch list, as per sources.

Stock of Allahabad Bank closed at Rs 16.35, down 1.51 per cent from its previous close.