PNB's recovery of bad loans doubled to ₹20,000 crore in FY19
1 min read 19 Jun 2019, 08:12 PM ISTChairman Sunil Mehta says PNB narrowed its net loss to ₹9,975 crore in FY19 against the loss of ₹12,283 crore during 2017-18Net NPA reduces from ₹48,684 crore in March 2018 to ₹30,038 crore
PremiumNEW DELHI : State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) recovered ₹20,000 crore of bad loans during the financial year ended March 2019, almost double the recovery amount in the preceding year, its Chairman Sunil Mehta has said.
The bank suffered losses allegedly after jewellers Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and some bank employees collided to defraud PNB of about ₹1,000 crore. The scam was unearthed in February 2018.
In the bank's annual report, Mehta said the financial year 2018-19 started off on a tepid note.
"With the biggest financial incident in terms of severity and enormity, the bank had a huge task before it to overcome the crisis and turnaround," he added.
In spite of challenges, he said the bank was able to narrow its net loss to ₹9,975 crore against the loss of ₹12,283 crore during 2017-18, and high level of net non-performing assets (NPAs) saw a sequential reduction from quarter-to-quarter. The net NPA reduced from ₹48,684 crore in March 2018 to ₹30,038 crore.
"The recovery momentum has continued with gross recovery of more than ₹20,000 crore up to March 2019 as compared to recovery of ₹9,666 crore during March 2018," Mehta said.
The annual report further said that despite the challenging circumstances, the bank has added over ₹1 lakh crore to the domestic business to reach ₹11.45 lakh crore as at March 2019 with year-on-year growth of 11.1%, "reflecting the unstinted faith of our customers".
The bank's gross domestic advances grew 14.1% y-o-y to reach ₹4.91 lakh crore.
It also took initiative in identifying wilful defaulters and notices were issued to various borrowers who were found to have committed an act of wilful default.
As a result, as on March 31, 2019, 1,142 borrowers were declared as wilful defaulters, according to the annual report.
