PNB expects recovery of Rs 14,000 cr in 3 qtrs; Rs 4-6K cr profit in FY22

New Delhi: State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Tuesday said it expects a recovery of Rs 14,000 crore from bad loans during the three quarters and earn a profit of Rs 4,000-6,000 crore in 2021-22 aided by rationalisation of expenses along with robust recovery.

Controlling the expenditure has got multiple dimensions, one of them is rationalisation of branches, PNB managing director S S Mallikarjuna Rao told reporters.

"We have succeeded in rationalising more than 500 branches. We are expecting to rationalise 1,000 branches by March 2022, which will give huge amount of reduction in the operational expenditure," he said.

Currently, the bank has about 10,641 branches across the country. On the recovery side, he said, the bank expects Rs 5,000-5,200 crore from NCLT cases by March 2022. This will help reduce bad debt or non-performing assets by about Rs 12,000 crore.

"In normal recovery we generally get around Rs 3,000 crore per quarter. So, another Rs 9,000-10,000 crore we are expecting in normal recovery," he said. Rao exuded the confidence that the bank should earn annual profit between Rs 4,000 crore and Rs 6,000 crore aided by strong recovery and cost rationalisation during the current financial year.

"Guidance for 2021-22 would be Rs 4,000-6,000 crore...at the balancesheet level the cost of deposits have been reduced drastically, cost to income ratio has been reduced, yield on advances has come down," he said.

Besides, recoveries from NPAs where provision coverage ratio is 80 per cent, these will be write back, he said.