UCO Bank registers highest increase in gross NPAs

UCO Bank was the worst performer among the public sector banks registering highest increase in gross non-performing assets (NPAs) in percentage terms against total loans in the last fiscal.
According to the provisional RBI data taking into account domestic operations of banks, gross NPA to gross advances ratio of Kolkata-based UCO Bank increased to 8.05 per cent at the end of March 2015 from 4.47 per cent, an accretion of 3.58 on an annual basis.
It was followed by Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) and Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) with gross NPA rising to 8.30 per cent, and 6.18 per cent respectively at the end of March 2015. In case of IOB variation compared to the previous financial year was 3.46 while for BoM was 3.02.

Besides, the gross NPA taking into account the domestic operation of Dena Bank increased from 3.33 per cent to 5.29 per cent at the end of 2014-15, recording a variation of 1.96 per cent.
At the same time, Corporation Bank's gross NPA level rose from 3.42 per cent to 4.80 per cent at the end of March 2015, showing an accretion of 1.38 over the previous fiscal.
Rising NPA has hit the bottomline of banks and to strengthen their balancesheet the government is providing Rs 25,000 capital support in the current fiscal.

Last month Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said though non-performing assets (NPAs) in the banking sector was a cause of concern, there was no ground to "panic".

"The banking system that we inherited primarily, the public sector banks, was actually very challenging. When the economy slowed down, and when you inherit the economy at sub-5 per cent level, it has an impact on the banking system as well... Primarily three or four sectors... (have) added to the NPAs of the public sector banks," he had said.
He had said the NPA was mainly in sectors like highways, steel, state discoms and textiles.