At the end of March 2008, the bank's gross NPA on home, auto, personal, credit cards, dealer financing and loans to developers touched Rs 5,552 crore as compared with Rs 3,114 crore at the end of 2006-07.
In its annual report, the bank attributed the increase to seasoning of loans, change in portfolio mix in favour of unsecured loans, such as personal loans and credit cards, and an increase in bad debts in rural markets.
Gross NPAs are bad debts for which banks do not make a provision. In case of public sector banks, the gross NPAs rose by 5 per cent to Rs 37,854.15 in the last financial year.
ICICI Bank, which was the most aggressive player in the retail banking arena, has decided to go slow on portfolio growth during the current financial year and will lower the growth rate estimates to 10-15 per cent.
The moderation started last year itself and the share of retail credit in the bank's overall portfolio fell to 58.6 per cent in 2007-08 as against 65.2 per cent in the previous year.
Home loans constituted nearly half the retail loan portfolio of the private bank, while the share of personal loans and credit cards was estimated at 10.7 per cent and 7.2 cent, respectively.
Most banks have been hit by higher delinquency levels in the retail portfolio. Citibank and State Bank of India have also seen higher defaults on their credit card portfolio. Citi Financial, a Citi India arm, is also facing up to bad debt pressure.
ICICI Bank said that at the end of 2007-08, retail loans constituted 71.8 per cent of the bank's overall gross NPAs at Rs 7,600 crore, as compared with Rs 4,200 crore in 2006-07.
The bank's net NPA rose 76 per cent to Rs 3,564 crore. As a proportion of advances, net NPAs at the end of March 2007 were estimated at 1.49 per cent as against 0.98 per cent during the previous financial year.
ICICI Bank said it had sold some of its stressed assets, including retail NPAs, to asset reconstruction companies. Aggregate investments by ICICI Bank in security receipts issued by the Asset Reconstruction Company (Arcil) were estimated at Rs 2,853 crore at the end of March 31 this year.
The net NPA of SBI rose by 41 per cent to Rs 7,424 crore. At the end of the last financial year, the net NPA to net advances ratio for SBI and the SBI group stood at 1.78 per cent and 1.43 per cent, respectively.
