UCO Bank targets Rs 8,000 crore recovery in FY20

Kolkata, June 26 (IANS) State-run UCO Bank, which is focusing on increasing retail, agriculture and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) business, is aiming at Rs 8,000 crore recovery from the non-performing asset (NPA) accounts during the current fiscal, an official said on Wednesday.

"We set a target of at least Rs 2,000 crore of recovery per quarter and by this, we aim at recovering Rs 8,000 crore in the entire year," the bank's MD and CEO A.K. Goel said. 

The lender is expecting at least Rs 1,000 crore of recoveries by September this year from the resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code through the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), he said.

"We have recovered Rs 1,163 crore from six accounts for which the NCLT resolution was done. For another seven accounts, we made a partial recovery of Rs 20 crore and about Rs 79 crore is yet to be received.

"There are about 14 accounts for which CoC (Committee of Creditors) approved the resolution but the NCLT has not passed the order. We are going to recover around Rs 1,795 crore from these 14 accounts. Of this (amount), we are expecting to recover at least Rs 1,000 crore by the September quarter," he told reporters after the bank's 16th Annual General Meeting here. 

The Kolkata-headquartered lender referred 183 NPA accounts with a total exposure of Rs 25,096 crore to the NCLT. Of these, 109 accounts with aggregate exposure of Rs 15,865 crore were admitted in the tribunal while 72 accounts with a total exposure of Rs 8,226 crore were not and the remaining two accounts were sold.

Goel said the bank is eyeing to lower its net NPA ratio to less than 6 per cent by end of the current fiscal.

Gross NPA percentage increased marginally to 25 per cent in 2018-19 (FY19) from 24.64 per cent in 2017-18 (FY18) while its net NPA percentage decreased to 9.72 per cent in FY19 from 13.10 per cent in the previous year.

Goel also said its top 100 accounts having a total exposure of about 70-80 per cent of the bank's total NPA are being "monitored rigorously" by its top management. 

UCO Bank, which is under the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework of the Reserve Bank of India, is hopeful of making profits by end of the current fiscal.

"By the end of this fiscal, we are hopeful to come out from the PCA and expecting to make profit," he said, adding that they have set up the Sankalp-2020 mission to come out of the PCA through a multi-pronged strategy by boosting low-cost deposit base, increasing retail, agriculture and MSME business, strengthening of credit monitoring and recovering aggressively from NPA accounts.

The lender reported an operating profit Rs 2,760 crore in FY19 as against Rs 1,334 crore in the previous year, reflecting a growth of 106.88 per cent.

However, the net loss in FY19 stood at Rs 4,321 crore as compared to a loss of Rs 4,436 crore in FY18.