UCO Bank Q4 net profit up 290%, says will open new branches across India

The company says it seeks a loan growth of 15 per cent this fiscal and it has managed to reduce its NPA.

State-owned UCO Bank recorded a 290 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 312.18 crore in the quarter ended March 2022. It had a net profit of Rs 80.03 crore in the year-ago period.

Net interest income of the bank for the quarter increased to Rs 1,652.38 crore from Rs 1,412.61 crore for the quarter ended March 2021, registering a growth of 16.97 per cent.

The bank’s total income fell to Rs 4,362 crore in the quarter compared to Rs 4,637 crore in the same period last year. However, for the full fiscal FY22, total income stood at Rs 18,082 crore as against Rs 17,870 crore in the year-ago period.

The net interest income of the bank for the year ended March 2022 increased to Rs 6,472.95 crore from Rs 5,479.70 crore for the year ended March 2021, registering a growth of 18.13 per cent. It is the highest net interest income earned by the Bank.

Gross NPA of the bank reduced to Rs 10,237.43 crore (7.89 per cent) as on March 31, 2022 from Rs 11,351.97 Crore (9.59 per cent) as on March 31, 2021.

Soma Sankara Prasad, managing director and CEO of UCO Bank, said the lender was under the central bank’s prompt Corrective Action (PCA) for almost three years and could not open new branches. “Now that we are out of PCA, we find a lot of growth pockets where we could open branches. We are planning to open branches all over the country,” he said.

This fiscal, the bank is targeting a loan growth of 15 per cent. Last year, it was around 9.5 per cent which was also the general trend in the banking industry, Prasad said.

“With the economy opening up, we find that there are greater opportunities and we are also opening new branches so we have set a target of 15 per cent in our loan book for this year,” Prasad explained.

Growth in deposits would be 10-12 per cent this year, he said.