Rajeev Rishi, Chairman & Managing Director, Central Bank of India addressing the press to announce the financial results for the quarter ended June. (On his right) R.K. Goyal and (to his left) B. K. Divakara, Dr. R. C. Lodha, Executive Directors of the Bank were also present.
The state-run bank reported a marginal 6 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 203 crore in the June quarter on account of reduction in cost of deposits and lower provisioning for bad loans. However, the profitability was dragged down by a rise in non-performing loans.
“Our cost of deposits has come down by around 20 basis points. We are aware that NPAs are going to happen and the resultant erosion of interest income. “So, the best way is to mitigate this by reducing cost and our single largest cost factor is interest outgo and we have been trying to reduce it by focusing on CASA,” Rajeev Rishi said. Accordingly, cost of deposits came down to 7.02 per cent in the quarter from 7.18 per cent a year ago, he said.
“We had to provide less for NPAs. In fact, there was certain movement back from the restructured book. This also contributed to net profit,” he said, adding that NPA provisions, including those for restructured assets, came down to Rs 576 crore from Rs 655 crore. Gross non-performing assets rose to 6.70 per cent from 6.15 per cent, while net NPA too jumped to 4 per cent from 3.62 per cent. Fresh slippages in the quarter stood at Rs 1,869 crore.
