Bank of India posts $530 million net loss in fourth quarter

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Bank of India , India's third biggest state-run lender by assets, reported a fourth-quarter loss of 35.87 billion rupees ($529.92 million) as it set aside more money to cover a surge in bad loans.

This was the third straight quarterly loss for the Mumbai-based lender, which had reported a net loss of 561.4 million rupees the previous year.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans rose to 13.07 percent in the quarter ending March 2016, from 9.18 percent in December. Provisions, including for loan losses, more than doubled from a year earlier to 54.70 billion rupees, the lender said in a regulatory filing.

 

($1 = 67.6900 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Suvashree Dey Choudhury; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)