Bank of Maharashtra tops PSU bank chart in MSME loan growth in FY21

State-owned Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) has become top performer among public sector lenders in terms of retail and MSME loan growth during 2020-21.

The Pune-based lender recorded a 35 per cent growth in MSME loans at Rs 23,133 crore in 2020-21, according to the BoM data.

It was followed by the Chennai-based Indian Bank which posted a 15.22 per cent growth in loan disbursal to MSMEs with aggregate loans at Rs 70,180 crore at the end of March 2021.

When it came to loans to retail, BoM with nearly 25.61 per cent growth was ahead of even the country's largest lender State Bank of India, which recorded 16.47 per cent rise.

However, in absolute terms SBI's asset base to retail segment was a whopping 30 times higher at Rs 8.70 lakh crore as against Rs 28,651 crore of BoM.

Bank of Baroda increased its retail loan portfolio by 14.35 per cent to Rs 1.20 lakh crore during the last fiscal year, the data showed.

For the full year 2020-21, BoM's standalone net profit jumped nearly 42 per cent to Rs 550.25 crore. In the previous year, the profit was Rs 388.58 crore. The bank's asset quality improved significantly as the gross bad loans or gross Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) dipped to 7.23 per cent of gross advances by the end of March 2021 as against 12.81 per cent by the same period of 2020.

In absolute terms, gross bad loans stood at Rs 7,779.68 crore at the end of March 2021, lower than Rs 12,152.15 crore recorded in the year-ago period. Net NPAs came down to 2.48 per cent (Rs 2,544.32 crore) from 4.77 per cent (Rs 4,145.38 crore).