SBI fourth quarter profit down 66 percent on surge in bad loan provisions

MUMBAI (Reuters) - State Bank of India , the nation's top lender by assets, reported a worse-than-expected 66 percent fall in quarterly profit due to sharply higher provisions for bad loans.

The lender, which accounts for nearly a quarter of India's loans and deposits, said net profit was 12.64 billion rupees ($188.5 million) for the three months to March 31 from 37.42 billion rupees a year earlier.

Analysts on average had expected a net profit of 19.17 billion rupees, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans rose to 6.5 percent in March from 5.1 percent in December. Provisions for bad loans more than doubled from a year earlier to 121.39 billion rupees.

 

($1 = 67.0450 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Sunil Nair)