Capital infusion of Rs 7,575 cr to boost loan growth: SBI

The recently announced Rs 7,575-crore capital infusion by the government will help push credit growth, SBI said on Friday.

“That capital will go towards growth. So as we see the economy beginning to grow again, it will enable us to lend much more,” SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said on the sidelines of the launch of its wealth management product SBI Exclusif in Delhi.

Earlier this month, the government announced plans to inject Rs 22,915 crore capital in 13 lenders including SBI and Indian Overseas Bank.

This was the first tranche of capital infusion for the current fiscal and more funds would be provided in future depending on the performance of PSBs.

Out of the Rs 22,915 crore, SBI will get the largest share of Rs 7,575 crore, followed by Indian Overseas Bank (Rs 3,101 crore) and Punjab National Bank (Rs 2,816 crore).

Bhattacharya said the capital infusion would further strengthen capital adequacy ratio by 0.5 per cent.

Asked about expectation from forthcoming bi-monthly monetary policy review, she said it is expected that RBI will keep interest rate unchanged as inflation has gone up.

Retail inflation has gone up to around 5.8 per cent in June against RBI's target of 4 per cent (+/- 2 per cent).

RBI is scheduled to announce monetary policy review on August 9.

On asset quality of the bank, Bhattacharya said, "NPA is a continuing battle, so we will continue to fight that battle on many fronts. The ideas is to make resolution as quickly as possible."

SBI's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans rose to 6.5 per cent of gross advances as of March 2016, from 4.25 per cent a year ago.

In absolute terms, the gross NPAs reached Rs 98,172.80 crore, as against Rs 56,725.34 crore.

As part of NPA resolution exercise, SBI and Brookfield Asset Management of the USA have set up a joint venture with initial commitment of over $1 billion to make investments in businesses with stressed assets earlier this month.

"We have recently set up with asset reconstruction company with Brookfield to look at some larger assets. We are talking to many other. As something materialises, it will be informed," she added.

Brookfield committed around Rs 7,000 crore and SBI up to 5 per cent of the total investments into stressed assets.