State Bank of Travancore Q1 net loss at Rs 743 crore

The public sector net profit during the corresponding quarter in last financial year stood at Rs 81.32 crore

Public sector State Bank of Travancore (SBT) has reported a net loss of Rs 742.89 crore for the June quarter due to higher NPAs.

Its net profit during the corresponding quarter in last financial year stood at Rs 81.32 crore, the bank said in a statement.

On account of higher provisions of Rs 1,170 crore for NPA (Non-Performing Assets) and additional prudential provisionsor other stressed accounts, the bank has faced losses.

The Gross NPA stood at 9.38 per cent, while Net NPA was 5.99 per cent as onJune 2016, it said.

The bank, however, has recorded an operating profit of Rs 426.65 crore during the quarter under review.

SBT — one of the Kerala based-banks — is proposed to be merged with State Bank of India (SBI).

The Kerala Assembly had recently passed a resolution asking the Centre and RBI to revoke the decision for merger. Staff Unions of SBT had also protested against the merger. Both ruling CPI(M)-led LDF and Congress headed UDF had supported the resolution.

The other income also grew by around 35 per cent to Rs 351.37 crore during the three-month period as against Rs 260.72 crore in June quarter of the preceding financial year, on the back of robust growth of 142 per cent growth in profit from treasury operations.

While total deposits grew by Rs 10,255 crore mainly driven by a robust CASA growth of Rs 5,669 crore representing more than 55 per cent of total deposit growth.

The trend is also reflected during the current quarter of this financial year with a CASA growth of Rs 1,954 crore out of the total deposit growth of Rs 3,028 crore representing 65 per cent of total deposit growth during this quarter.

"The bank has been consistently growing CASA Deposits and replacing high cost deposits and bulk deposits with retail deposits to cut interest costs.

SBT's Current and Savings (CASA) deposits ratio stood at 31.84 per cent as on March 31, 2016 as against 29.79 per cent as against the corresponding period last year.

"The high cost deposit and bulk deposits came down sharply from 13.24 per cent to 9.34 per cent," C R Sasikumar, MD, SBT, said.

Total advances stood at Rs 68,276 crore as on June 2016 as against Rs 68,411 crore as on June 2015, the release said.

SBT has a total of 1,178 branches and 1,742 ATMs in 16 states and three Union Territories.

The bank has 851 branches and 1,370 ATMs in Kerala alone.