NPAs soar 35% in first 9 months of FY14

SBI was leading with an accretion of Rs 16,610 crore: NPASource.Com

The gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of listed banks rose 35.2 per cent to Rs 243,000 crore during the first three quarters of the current financial year, according to an industry report.

In absolute terms, the listed banks added Rs 63,386 crore to their gross NPAs during the nine months, with State Bank of India, the largest, leading with an accretion of Rs 16,610 crore, npasource.com, a portal that tracks bad assets in the system, said on Tuesday.

IDBI Bank added Rs 3,562 crore to take its gross NPA book to Rs 10,012 crore, , while Bank of Baroda's bad loans increased Rs 3,943 crore, or 49.4 per cent, to Rs 11,926 crore, it said.

For SBI, the increase in gross NPAs was 32.4 per cent. The bank had gross NPAs of Rs 67,799.33 crore as of December 31, up from Rs 51,189.4 crore on March 31 last year, according to its Q3 earnings filing to the BSE.

The portal said 10 of the 40 banks accounted for 70 per cent of the NPAs in the system. Barring ICICI Bank, the largest private sector lender, all the others on this list are state-run banks.

ICICI Bank's gross NPAs rose 8.2 per cent, or by Rs 791 crore, to Rs 10,399 crore, the portal said. The level of bad loans was Rs 9,607.75 crore on March 31, ICICI Bank said in a BSE filing last month.

"There is no respite for banks from the onslaught of higher interest rates and slowdown in the economy leading to further increase in loans turning bad from corporate as well as retail segments," portal Chairman DK Jain said.

He said the fourth quarter will be as bad as the previous quarters of this financial year for banks on asset quality stress and added that most lenders are likely to make higher provisions in the current quarter.

The net NPAs of listed banks climbed 49 per cent to Rs 1.38 trillion in the first three quarters, the portal said.

Both the sector regulator Reserve Bank of India and the government have repeatedly expressed concern at the rising level of NPAs and have been devising ways to tackle the problem. The RBI recently directed all banks to cooperate and work together in the case of single borrowers.