Indian banks' FY18 results likely to be weak, says S&P Global Ratings

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Indian banks' results for the fiscal year ended March 2018 are likely to be weak, S&P Global Ratings said on Thursday.

"While recent announcements are net negative for bank results, we believe that rating downgrades are unlikely. This is because our expectations for fiscal 2018 were already low for most banks," S&P Global Ratings Credit Analyst Michael Puli said.

The central bank's recently announced change to the recognition of restructured loans will probably foster early recognition and higher provisions across the banking sector.

"We believe that announcements such as smoothing provisioning for mark-to-market losses on investments over four quarters will temper but not offset the immediate burden from strained performances," S&P said.

In a report titled 'India's Banks Are Bracing For Weak Fiscal 2018 Results', S&P said it believes that at a system level the ratio of stressed assets is realistically around 13-15 per cent, compared with 12.3 per cent in the first half of fiscal 2018.

"We don't expect the ratio to rise higher than our estimates, barring one-off events that are difficult to anticipate, such as the fraud case at Punjab National Bank," S&P said.