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| Indian Bank may sell Rs 900-cr bad loans to ARC |
| T E Narasimhan / Chennai Sep 02, 2010, 00:57 IST |
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State-owned Indian Bank plans to sell assets worth Rs 900 crore to an asset reconstruction company (ARC). The bank said it would soon call for an expression of interest (EoI).
The bank said it would also call for an EoI for a mutual fund partner for its subsidiary by September-end. The bank had earlier said it would call for an EoI for this on August 31.
Chairman and Managing Director T M Bhasin told Business Standard: “We plan to sell assets, mainly below Rs 10 lakh, to an ARC. The estimated value is around Rs 900 crore. These include non-performing assets (NPAs) and technically written-off assets which are taking long time.”
“We want to sell these NPAs and other assets in a transparent and competitive way and so we decided to call for an EoI”.
 A bank can sell NPAs from its books to ARCs such as Arcil only if these assets have not been performing for at least two years. Such a sale can only take place on a cash basis.
In recent days, Indian Bank has taken several initiatives, including use of more technology and special lok adalats, to recover NPAs.
On Monday, the bank referred 106 NPA cases involving Rs 88 crore to a special lok adalat chaired by Justice (Retired) M Sowundarapandian convened by the Tamil Nadu Legal Services Authority.
Bhasin said: “This is an effective, efficient and a time-saving system of alternative dispute resolution”.
He added decrees granted by lok adalats were binding on both the sides since the proceedings were consultative in nature and final.
The NPAs of the bank were among the lowest at 0.71 per cent, he added.
The bank plans to increase its credit portfolio by Rs 16,000 crore during 2010-11. The bank’s loan book, as on March 31, was at Rs 62,500 crore.
Executive Director Anup Sankar Bhattacharya said the target was to become a zero NPA bank by March 31, since it had shifted to identifying NPAs automatically from its core banking software.
He added gross NPAs as on June 30 were 1.45 per cent, which would come down do 0.5 per cent by March 31.
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