In the quarter-ended September 2020, the
GNPA ratio of scheduled commercial banks improved to 7.7% against 9.3% in the year-ago period. India’s
banking sector did see a decrease in its gross non-performing assets (GNPA) owing to the moratorium offered by the Reserve Bank of India (
RBI) and due to recoveries and higher write-offs by the multiple banks.
State Bank of India has recoveries worth of Rs 4,038 crore and written off loans to the tune of Rs 5,617 crore. Likewise, ICICI Bank has recovered Rs 1,945 crore, written-off Rs2,469 crore.
| Bank |
Recoveries |
| SBI |
Rs 4,038 cr |
| Bank of India |
Rs 1,172 cr |
| Bank of Baroda |
Rs 1,642 cr |
| ICICI Bank |
Rs 1,945 cr |
| Yes Bank |
Rs 1,000 cr |
| Bank |
Write-off |
| SBI |
Rs 5,617 cr |
| PNB |
Rs 4,555 cr |
| BoB |
Rs 2,553 cr |
| ICICI Bank |
Rs 2,469 cr |
| Axis Bank |
Rs 1,812 cr |
On an overall basis public sector banks accounting for 75% share of GNPAs of SCBs (scheduled commercial banks) experienced a drop in the GNPA ratio to 9.3% in the Q2FY21 against 11.6% in Q2FY20 and 9.8% in Q3FY20.
However, CARE Ratings in its latest report stated that the GNPAs would have been around 0.5% to 0.6% higher had moratorium accounts been classified as NPAs.
Even RBI in it’s Financial Stability Report for July 2020 had warned that the asset quality of the financial system could deteriorate sharply, caused by the lockdown-induced disruptions to both supply- and demand-side factors.
Will lending improve in 2021?
As per the RBI’s weekly bulletin, bank credit deployment has already started to witness a decline. The credit growth decelerated to 5.8% and 5.7% during the last two fortnights, compared to last year’s level of 8.0% and 7.9%, respectively (as of November 22, 2019 and December 06, 2019).
Banks have been very selective with their credit portfolios. Sectoral deployment of bank credit has witnessed a downward trend in some crucial industries and sectors. Growth in bank credit to NBFCs declined mainly because of the base effect and risk aversion in banking system due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As for MSMEs, they did secure loans but at higher rates.
In an interview to ET Now, Suresh Ganapathy of Macquarie said, “Bank credit growth continues to languish, with similar trends observed in the NBFC space. There has been a fall in consumption demand, especially in home loans, auto and service segments; and decline in industry credit, primarily on account of risk aversion on the part of banks to lend to MSMEs.”
CRISIL expects the bank credit growth to plummet to a multi-decadal low of 0-1%. Krishnan Sitaraman, senior director at CRISIL, told ETBFSI, “This crisis is unprecedented and so will its economic fallout be, such as lower capex demand as well as lower discretionary spends, to name some. This slowdown credit offtake is significant across segments in the current fiscal. The corporate loan portfolio, which constitutes almost half of total credit, is expected to be the worst-hit, and de-grow this fiscal.” Hence, if the denominator (credit) doesn’t grow the fresh slippages will add to the NPAs, and the GNPA ratio will increase.
There is an improvement in the economy. GST and GDP numbers have shown some growth. The banks are seeing a rise in the credit applications but they are cautious. B Ramesh Babu, MD & CEO, Karur Vysya Bank told ETBFSI, “No one wants to press an accelerator button right now. Because how is it going to pan out no one knows. The current growth is a short term or long term no one knows. So wait and watch mode is preferable.”
Real picture is still awaited
The liquidity surplus in the banking system has increased in the week ended January 1, 2021 to Rs 6.21 lakh crore from Rs 5.09 lakh crore in the week ago period. As per RBI data, banks have maintained a liquidity surplus for the last 19 months. “This can be attributed to the inflow of bank deposits surpassing the outflow of bank credit. The incremental bank deposits (over March 20) have grown by 6.7% till December 18, 2020 as against the bank credit growth of 1.7%. With bank deposits outweighing bank credit flows, the banking system would continue to see a sizeable liquidity surplus in the current week, too,” said Kavita Chacko, Senior Economist with CARE Ratings.
The various liquidity infusion measures being undertaken by the RBI — OMO purchases and, the LTRO and TLTRO — have also added to the liquidity surplus.
Experts view that the performance of financial sector would remain under pressure on account of lack of credit uptake, risk aversion, lower fee income and covid-related provisioning. With the overhang of stressed assets continuing, banks will continue to focus on improving their collection efficiency and an immediate turnaround in lending activity seems unlikely.
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