SBBJ profit tanks 31% in Q4 on higher bad loan provisions

State-run State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ) today reported a 31.05 per cent plunge in net profit to Rs 193.22 crore for the quarter ended March 31, due to increased provisions for bad loans.
The bank had posted a profit of Rs 280.25 crore in the same period last year.
"In the fourth quarter, we doubled the provisions for loans compared with the corresponding quarter last year," the bank's managing director Jyoti Ghosh told reporters here.
The loan-loss provision stood at Rs 296 crore during the period compared with Rs 141 crore a year ago.
The associate of the State Bank of India has an exposure of Rs 400 crore to the Punjab government food credit and as per the RBI instructions it has made a provision of 7.5 per cent or Rs 31 crore during the quarter.

For the full fiscal, the profit after tax jumped 9.49 per cent to Rs 850.60 crore as against Rs 776.87 crore last year.

Net interest margin of the bank improved to 3.29 per cent from 3.10 per cent in the year ago period.
The gross non-performing ratio stood at 4.82 per cent as against 4.14 per cent, while net NPA was at 2.75 per cent compared with 2.54 per cent.
Fresh slippages in the three months to March was Rs 1,065 crore. Of which, Rs 380 crore of bad loans were from asset quality review.
It sold Rs 133 crore of bad loans to asset reconstruction companies, while recovery in the quarter stood at Rs 70 crore.

So far, the bank refinanced seven accounts worth Rs 500-600 crore under the 5:25 scheme. Five accounts were restructured under strategic debt restructuring during the year.
Provision coverage ratio of the bank was at 62.11 per cent as against 57.05 per cent at the end of March 2015.
The scrip of SBBJ ended at Rs 523.05, down 2.47 per cent on BSE, whose benchmark index Sensex inched up by a marginal 0.01 per cent.