Credit ratings agency, Crisil Ratings in its latest report has said that the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) recent decision to relax provisioning norms for banks and permitting them to spread mark-to-market (MTM) losses on investments incurred in the third and fourth quarters of FY18 across four quarters, will provide the much-needed breather of Rs 27,000 crore to banks by reducing their provisioning burden for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018.
According to the report, profitability of banks has come under intense pressure as provisioning requirements have been rising with ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), withdrawal of various restructuring schemes prior to February 2018 causing an increase in NPAs, and massive spike in bond yields since September 2017 leading to significant MTM losses in their gilt investments. It also noted that accounting for the MTM losses over four quarters would mean nearly Rs 8,000 crore provisioning relief including write-backs for banks in the last quarter of fiscal 2018. It added that another relief worth Rs 19,000 crore, in the form of lower provisioning or write-back, would also ensue because the RBI has permitted banks to achieve 50 percent provisioning on accounts referred to NCLT by June 2018 instead of March as stipulated earlier.
However, the ratings agency has stated that in fiscal 2018-19, operating profitability of banks should stabilise on the back of incremental credit growth and lower interest reversals after reduction in fresh slippages to NPAs but overall, bottomlines will remain under pressure because of high provisioning burden stemming from the large stock of NPAs. Besides, it pointed out that in the current fiscal, recoveries are expected from the resolution of few large accounts under the IBC, especially from the steel sector. It said “that should provide some offset to the high provisioning requirements”.
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