UCO Bank Q3 net loss at Rs 998 crore on bad loans

New Delhi: State-owned UCO Bank Friday reported a marginal drop in its net loss at Rs 998.74 crore for third quarter ended December 31, 2018, as bad loans and provisions ballooned.

The bank had posted a net loss of Rs 1,016.43 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal. Total income of the bank also came down to Rs 3,585.56 crore during October-December period of 2018-19, as against Rs 3,721.93 crore in same quarter of 2017-18, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

The Kolkata-headquartered lender, witnessed worsening asset quality as the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) ballooned to 27.39 per cent of gross loans at end of December 31, 2018, from 20.64 per cent in December 2017.

Sequentially also, NPAs were higher from 25.37 per cent by end of second quarter ended September of this fiscal.

In value terms, the gross NPAs or bad loans stood at Rs 31,121.79 crore as on December 31, 2018 as against Rs 25,382.40 crore a year-ago.

Net NPAs were 12.48 per cent by end of third quarter as against 10.90 per cent. Value-wise, the net NPAs were Rs 11,755.61 crore, lower than Rs 11,923.45 crore last year.

Thus, provisioning for bad loans during quarter ended December 2018 were hiked to Rs 2,243.85 crore as against Rs 1,682.40 crore a year earlier.

The non-performing loan provisioning coverage ratio is 69.49 per cent as on December 31, 2018, UCO Bank said.