Canara Bank Q4 loss narrows to Rs 551 cr
   Date :11-May-2019

 
STATE-OWNED Canara Bank on Friday said its standalone net loss narrowed multi-fold to Rs 551.53 crore for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018-19, mainly driven by lower provisioning for bad loans.
The bank had posted a net loss of Rs 4,859.77 crore during the corresponding January-March period of the preceding fiscal.
 
Total income of the bank during the March quarter rose to Rs 14,000.43 crore, compared to Rs 11,555.11 crore in the year-ago period, Canara Bank said in a regulatory filing. For the full 2018-19 fiscal, the bank has posted a net profit of Rs 347.02 crore. There was a net loss of Rs 4,222.24 crore in 2017-18. Total income during the fiscal was higher at Rs 53,385.30 crore as against Rs 48,194.94 crore a year earlier.
 
The lender’s operating profit (EBITDA) for FY2019 improved by 10.9 per cent to Rs 9,548 crore as compared to Rs 10,590 crore in FY2018, Canara Bank MD and CEO, Sankara Narayanan told reporters. The Bengaluru-headquartered lender witnessed improvement in the asset quality with the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) falling to 8.83 per cent of gross advances at March-end 2019 compared to 11.84 per cent a year earlier
.
Net NPAs or bad loans stood at 5.37 per cent, compared with 7.48 per cent year ago. In absolute-value, the gross NPAs were Rs 39,224.12 crore at March-end 2019, as against Rs 47,468.47 crore a year earlier. Likewise, the net NPAs stood at Rs 22,955.11 crore in the quarter under review, compared to Rs 28,542.40 crore.
 
There was also a reduction in provisioning requirement to the tune of Rs 5,120.85 crore in March quarter FY2019 as against Rs 8,762.57 crore parked aside in the year-ago period.The overall provisioning and contingencies stood at Rs 5,523.50 crore.