Stepping up efforts to recover bad loans, state-owned Punjab National Bank has identified assets worth Rs 1,800 crore to be sold to ARCs by month end.
"Certain accounts are in the pipeline, may be assets around Rs 1800 crore, and these will be put on the block during the current fiscal," PNB Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian told PTI.
The bank had made recovery of Rs 1,600 crore by selling bad debts to Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) in the three quarters of 2016-17, she said.
"We give reserve price to all the ARCs and we expect them to pay above that after due diligence," she added.
Emphasising that recovery has been a key focus area of the bank, she said PNB has created a war room which tracks the efforts in this direction after which loan recovery has seen a phenomenal growth.
Total recovery has more than doubled to Rs 2,464 crore in the April-December period of the current fiscal as compared to Rs 972 crore a year ago.
PNB, which has completed asset quality review (AQR) exercise, had made total cash recovery of Rs 937 crore during the third quarter alone.
During the December quarter the gross Non Performing Assets (NPAs) declined marginally to Rs 55,628 crore, from Rs 55,818 crore.
In ratio terms, however, the bank's asset quality deteriorated as gross NPAs hit 13.70 per cent of the gross advances as against 8.47 per cent a year ago.
Likewise, net NPAs rose to 9.09 per cent from 5.86 per cent in the year-ago period.
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