UCO Bank reduces bad debts, aims to be out of RBI's lending curbs by 2020

State-owned lender aims to returns to profits by lending to home-buyers and small businesses.

State-owned lender UCO Bank hopes to reduce its net non-performing assets (NPA) or bad debts to under six per cent in the current fiscal, enabling it to get out of the central bank's curbs on lending.

“The bank’s net NPA in December 2018 was 12.48 per cent which has reduced to 9.73 per cent in March 2019. And, we have set a target of bringing it to six per cent by March 2020 and we will definitely come out of PCA by then (March 2020),” said AK Goel, managing director and chief executive officer of the bank, in Bhubaneswar.

Goel was talking