PNB records Q4 profit of `262 cr

Punjab National Bank on Tuesday posted Rs 262 crore profit for the March quarter of last fiscal as it reduced bad loans and saw healthy growth in interest income.

The bank had reported a staggering standalone loss of Rs 5,361.70 crore in the January-March period of the preceding fiscal, 2015-16, due to a higher provisioning for bad loans.

PNB's total income for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 rose to Rs 14,989.33 crore from Rs 12,669.21 crore in the year-ago period due to a healthy growth of 33 per cent in net interest income. It was Rs 3,684 crore, as against Rs 2,768 crore.

PNB's newly appointed managing director Sunil Mehta said the bank has witnessed improvement in gross net performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans which declined to 12.53 per cent of gross advances at the end of March this year, as against 12.90 per cent year ago.

Net NPAs were trimmed to 7.81 per cent against 8.61 per cent year ago.

This helped the country's second largest public sector lender to cut down on its provisioning for bad loans to Rs 4,910.39 crore for the quarter under review, from Rs 10,773.37 crore parked aside in the same period year ago.