Canara Bank posts second-quarter profit on tax write-back

(Reuters) - India's Canara Bank Ltd reported a 15.1 percent rise in second-quarter net profit on Wednesday, helped by a tax write-back.

Net profit came in at 3 billion rupees ($40.56 million) for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of 2.60 billion rupees a year ago, helped by a tax gain of 8.07 billion rupees.

Analysts had expected a loss of 1.16 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv data.

However, provisions for the quarter surged 31.5 percent to 28.35 billion rupees, as the lender set aside more funds for bad loans, the bank said https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/55c5f659-e440-4575-8e88-8142979f2589.pdf.

Asset quality improved, with gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans dropping to 10.56 percent at end-Sept, compared with 11.05 percent in the previous quarter. This was still higher than 10.51 percent in the same period a year ago.

($1 = 73.9650 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Vyas Mohan)