Allahabad Bank's NPA Saga Makes Haunting Stories of Worth Rs 12,566 Crore

State-run Allahabad Bank, which referred 65 stressed accounts involving around Rs 12,566 crore to the NCLT for IBC resolution during last fiscal, is focusing on recovery and rebalancing its loan book with emphasis on small, micro, agriculture and retail advances.

The lender also said the number of "wilful defaulters" declared by the bank stood at 257, a two-and half-fold jump from March 2017 figure of 101.

"Taking into account the optimistic outlook of the economy and its different sectors, the bank will align its business objective to maximise its gains.

"The bank shall primarily focus on aggressive recovery drive, further build-up in CASA (current account and savings account), rebalancing of loan book with focus on SMARt (small, micro, agriculture and retail) loans thereby increasing its share to the loan book supported by technology," its latest annual report said.

The Kolkata-headquartered lender would also look at different avenues to raise capital with simultaneous reduction in risk weighted assets.

"Bank has referred 65 Non-Performing Assets borrowal cases involving an amount of Rs 12,566.11 crore to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) during FY18.

"A separate -- NCLT Cell -- at Head Office for exclusive monitoring of NCLT referred cases is being formed," it said in the report.

At the end of the 2017-18, gross NPA of the bank stood at Rs 26,562.76 crore as compared to Rs 20,687.83 crore in FY 17 (2016-17) and Net NPA remained at Rs 12,229.13 crore as on March 31 as against Rs 13,433.51 crore in FY17.

According to it, FY18 was a challenging year for the Indian banking industry due to continued stress faced in asset quality on account of various macroeconomic and other factors.

The lender has nine Asset Recovery Management Branches (ARMBs) which function exclusively for resolving NPAs and it organised 12 recovery camps in the previous year (one camp in each month) involving all the branches.

"This step was very successful in terms of recovery that amounted to Rs 3564.55 crore," it said.

According to lender, it sold 216 stressed accounts and assets worth Rs 2,539.21 crore to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) during the last financial year.