Bank of Maharashtra third quarter profit rises 14% to Rs 154 crore

The bank was helped by a decline in bad loans

State-owned Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) on Tuesday reported a 14 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 154 crore for the third quarter ended December 2020, helped by a decline in bad loans.

The Pune-based lender had posted a net profit of Rs 135 crore in the same quarter a year ago.

The total income of the bank rose to Rs 3,577 crore from Rs 3,319 crore in the year-ago period, BoM said in a statement.

On the asset quality front, the bank recorded improvement with gross NPA declining to 7.69 per cent, or Rs 8,072.43 crore from 16.77 per cent, or Rs 15,746 crore.

Similarly, Net NPAs (non-performing assets) eased to 2.59 per cent or Rs 2,578 crore as against 5.46 per cent or Rs 4,507 crore.

As a result, the total provision other than tax came down to Rs 498 crore compared to Rs 917 crore at the end of the third quarter previous fiscal. Of this, the provision for bad loans came down to Rs 386 crore from Rs 794 crore at the end of December 2019.

The provision coverage ratio improved to 90 per cent as on December 31, 2020, as against 83 per cent at the end of the third quarter previous fiscal, it said.

"In pursuance to Supreme court order, the bank has not declared accounts as NPA, which were not declared NPA till 31.08.2020. As a matter of prudence, the Bank made an additional provision of Rs 150 crore (out of which Rs 30 crore provision made in current quarter)," it added.

The capital adequacy ratio increased to 13.65 per cent against 11.21 per cent and the Tier 1 ratio stood at 10.54 per cent as of December-end.

Its total business increased by 13.15 per cent to Rs 2,66,875 crore at the end of December 2020.