SBI Q4 net up 23% at Rs 3742 cr,to focus on recovery this year

Country's biggest bank SBI today reported a 23 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 3,742.02 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2015 and said it would focus on bad loan recovery in the current fiscal to rev up its balance sheet.
State Bank of India (SBI) had made a net profit of Rs 3,040.74 crore during the same quarter a year ago.
Total income of the bank for the quarter under review increased to Rs 48,616.41 crore from Rs 42,443.27 crore in the same period a year ago, SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said while announcing the quarterly numbers here.

The bank has recommended a dividend of 350 per cent or Rs 3.50 per share for the year ended March 2015.
For the entire fiscal ended March 2015, SBI's net profit increased 20 per cent to Rs 13,101.57 crore as compared to Rs 10,891.17 crore for the year ended March 2014.
SBI Group's consolidated net profit rose 20 per cent to Rs 16,994.30 crore during the fiscal under review as compared to Rs 14,173.77 crore in the previous fiscal.

Bhattacharya said: "We are now intending to clean up the balance sheet and pursue recoveries ...."
In the last year, she said, "we had pursued a two-pronged strategy of consolidating the existing businesses and exploring new ones."

The bank's asset quality improved in the period under study as net non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans were trimmed to 2.12 per cent of net advances as against 2.57 per cent at the end of previous fiscal.
At the same time, gross NPAs also came down to 4.25 per cent of gross advances, from 4.95 per cent at the end of March 2014.
Bhattacharya said the bank's gross NPA at the end of March, 2015 stood at Rs 56,725 crore as compared to Rs 61,605 crore in the previous corresponding period.
Shares of SBI ended with a loss of nearly 3 per cent on BSE.