Bank of India's net profit at 720 cr in June quarter

Mumbai: State-owned Bank of India on Tuesday reported a 15 per cent drop in its net profit to Rs 720 crore for the quarter ended June 2021, due to lower net interest income and higher provisioning for bad loans. The net profit stood at Rs 844 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

However, the net profit was up sequentially from Rs 250.19 crore recorded in the three months ended March 2021. In the first quarter of the current fiscal, the lender's total income was down at Rs 11,698.13 crore. In the year-ago period, it stood at 11,941.52 crore, according to a regulatory filing. Its net interest income (NII) during April-June 2021 declined 10 per cent to Rs 3,145 crore, from Rs 3,481 crore in the year-ago period.

Domestic net interest margins (NIM) stood at 2.35 per cent from 2.73 per cent. "Our NIM will inch up further as the year progresses. We will pair up advances and deposit growth. "We expect that going forward, this issue (lower NIM) will also be addressed through higher accretion in our CASA (current account-saving account) deposits," the bank's Managing Director and CEO A K Das told reporters.

He expects NIM to improve to 2.50 per cent by the end of this fiscal. The lender saw improvement in its asset quality, with gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) at 13.51 per cent as against 13.91 per cent on June 30, 2020. Net NPA also improved to 3.35 per cent from 3.58 per cent. Slippage ratio stood at 1.09 per cent as against 0.11 per cent in Q1 FY21. Total provision was up 4.26 per cent to Rs 2,086 crore as against Rs 2,001 crore in the same quarter of FY21. Provision from NPAs surged by 14 per cent to Rs 873 crore from Rs 767 crore. Provision coverage ratio (PCR) stood at 86.17 per cent, compared with 84.87 per cent in the first quarter of 2020-21. Fresh slippages during the quarter stood at Rs 3,942 crore. While it recovered Rs 851 crore of bad loans, upgradation stood at Rs 2,057 crore.