Syndicate Bank has registered a near three-fold jump in net profit to Rs 261.56 crore during the quarter ended June 2009, as against Rs 87.89 crore in the corresponding period last year, due to a steep increase in other income.
While the public sector bank’s total income was 30.55 per cent higher at Rs 416.12 crore at the end of the first quarter of the current financial year, other income went up nearly three times to Rs 416 crore during April-June this year from Rs 147 crore in the corresponding period last year.
Barring retail banking, which was the case with most banks, there was an increase in pre-tax profits from all segments. In case of treasury, the pre-tax profit was estimated at Rs 179 crore during the first quarter of the current financial year, as against a loss of Rs 23 crore a year ago.
While income rose, the bank managed keep expenses under check with total expenditure rising by 20.84 per cent to Rs 2,398.8 at the end of first quarter of 2009-10, as against Rs 1,985.04 crore in the corresponding period last year.
What also helped Syndicate Bank was a 30 per cent decrease in non-tax provisions to Rs 220 crore, which included an ad-hoc provision of Rs 60 crore for an increase in wages.
The lower increase was partly on account of a 12.8 fall in gross non-performing asset (NPA) to Rs 1,588.3 crore at the end of June 2009, as against Rs 1,821.4 in the corresponding period last year.
As a result, the proportion of gross NPA to advances fell from 2.84 per cent at the end of June last year to 1.91 per cent as on June 30, 2009. In case of net NPA, however, there was a 29.2 per cent increase to Rs 840.5 crore at the end of the first quarter of the current financial year though in terms of proportion of advances, the share was almost constant at 1.02 per cent as the bank’s total advances went up.
At the end of June 2009, Syndicate Bank’s asset base rose by 26.5 per cent to Rs 1,31,846 crore.