Bank of India sinks to Q2 loss as bad debt provisions jump

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Bank of India , the nation's third-biggest state-run lender by assets, sank to a quarterly net loss of 11.26 billion rupees ($169.6 million), hit by higher provisions for bad loans that more than doubled against the same period a year ago

In the same quarter to September last year, the bank had posted a 7.86-billion-rupee profit, and analysts on average had expected a net profit of 3.72 billion rupees.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans climbed to 7.55 percent in the second quarter, compared with 6.8 percent in the previous quarter, and 3.54 percent in the same three months a year ago.

 

($1 = 66.3800 rupees)

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Writing by Clara Ferreira Marques; Editing by Sunil Nair)