NPA resolution should decline in future as fresh accretion coming down: SBI

The resolutions have already been done in a few cases, while they were in an advanced stage in a few others, said SBI official

The State Bank of India (SBI) has been pursuing resolution of Non Performing Assets (NPA) and they should decline in the future, with fresh accretion coming down, a senior bank official said on Tuesday.

"As far as the NPAs are concerned, most of the large accounts which were not performing had already been regularised as NPA. So the bank has been acting on getting the resolutions done. So, lot of those large cases are already under NCLT," SBI Managing Director (Retail & Digital Banking), Parveen Kumar Gupta told reporters here.

The resolutions have already been done in a few cases, while they were in an advanced stage in a few others, he said.

He hoped that those resolutions would go through in the next couple of months.

"The fresh accretion to NPAs has already come down. So, we hope that going forward on the NPA front, we should see a decline in the numbers. We don't see NPA numbers actually going up in the future," he said.

Gupta, who was speaking on the sidelines of celebration of 150th anniversary of SBI Hyderabad main branch, was asked about the steps the bank planned to take to ensure that it was able to tackle the issue of high NPAs.

To another query, he said some increase in NPAs in the agriculture segment has been seen in a few states like Maharahstra and Karnataka.

"In a few states, we have seen increase in the NPAs in the agri segment. But, we have not seen this across the country. Only in a few states, we have seen some increase," he said.

Asked about the exercise undertaken by the bank to replace old debit cards with more secure cards which has a deadline ending December 31, he said most of the active cards have already been replaced.

The bank has approached the regulator, RBI, to give it little more time in view of the enormity of the task, he said.

"Yes, there was a large number of cards that had to be replaced. We have approached the regulators, that is RBI to give us a little more time, given the enormity of the task involved," he said.

"But, as of now, most of the customers whose cards are being regularly used have been replaced. We hope that most of the customers who are actually using the cards would have already requested and got the cards changed," he added.

Replying to a query, he said the bank had sought six months time from the RBI.

Asked about the rationalisation in the number of branches in foreign countries, Gupta said the bank is going ahead as per the original plan. "There is no fresh review of that.