Gold Silver Reports (GSR) – The result has been that most public sector banks have reported large losses for the quarter ended March 2018. For the 17 listed PSU banks which have reported earnings till Friday, the total net loss stood at Rs 53,000 crore compared with a net loss of Rs 4,302 crore in the same quarter last year. Most banks took some reprieve through tax write-backs which helped reduces losses to some extent.
Government-owned banks, forced to accelerate the clean-up of their books in the final quarter of FY18, have reported losses in excess of Rs 50,000 crore. Banks have been recognising and providing for bad loans for the last two years now but the process was speeded up due to a tougher stressed asset framework put in place by the Reserve Bank of India in February.
All but two small public sector banks—Indian Bank and Vijaya Bank—reported a net loss for the fourth quarter. The largest quarterly losses have been reported by Punjab National Bank (Rs 13,417 crore), State Bank of India (Rs 7,718 crore) and IDBI Bank (Rs 5,663 crore). Four public sector banks, including Bank of India, are yet to report quarterly numbers.
