Bank of Baroda earned substantial profits in Q-4 of 2019-20
Kolkata, 26 June (HS) :Bank of Baroda (BoB), India’s third largest public sector bank after its amalgamation with Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank last year,has earned a net profit of Rs 507 crores during the 4th quarter of 2019-20.
Announcing the Q4FY20 earnings of the Bank, top sources at BoB told Hindusthan Samachar here today that the profits earned during the January to March 2020 quarter was against a loss of Rs 8,875 crores in the same period of last year.
A complete turnaround of the Bank’s financial position during the 4th quarter of last fiscal was possible because of its well diversified credit portfolio across corporate, MSME, retail, agriculture and others which witnessed a growth across all these businesses in the January-March quarter vis-à-vis the corresponding period in 2019, the sources said.
As a result BoB was also among the top three PSU banks offering maximum MSME loans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat economic stimulus package,the sources said adding the Bank was now committed to focus on providing lending support to the MSME sector to become a leader in terms of sanction and disbursement of credits.
But the bank which has a strong domestic presence through 9,482 branches and 13,193 ATMs across the country has reduced its provisions by 36 per cent on year on year basis to Rs 6,844 crores.
Similarly, its provisions for bad loans also declined by 69 per cent, also on a y-o-y basis, to Rs 3,190 crores and.the bank’s gross bad loan ratio or total bad loans as a percentage of total advances, fell 103 basis points to 9.4 per cent, the sources said adding BoB did not expect furtehr slippages in FY21 to exceed that of FY20.
Currently, 65 per cent of loan book was under moratorium and this ratio was expected to drop to 35 per cent by August this year.
Referring to BoB’s total digitalisation efforts, the sources said so far 4.1 million new users had boarded the new digital platform and of them 3.4 million users boarded between April-May this year to be a part of the Bank’s wholesome digital banking services.
As a result the bank had witnessed a 16 per cent jump in UPI transactions in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal and an 8 per cent growth in mobile banking transactions.
As such, Bank of Baroda Mobile app now ranks among the top 3 among large banks. Significantly, the bank has registered a 280 per cent quarter to quarter growth in UPI channel, 118 per cent jump in Bhim Aadhar and 36 per cent increase in payment gateway, due to the push of government on digital India and the increasing preference of consumers to shop online, the sources said..
