Bonjour, new guests from small-town India
Puneet Dhawan of Accor is brimming with ideas on ways to revive the hospitality sector
With a lot of buzz around the privatisation of Bank of Maharashtra and other public sector banks, a top official from the bank informed that they have not yet heard anything from the government on its privatisation.
“The government has not yet finalised any bank (for privatisation). This is a decision taken at the policy level. The process is going on and some of the banks are being considered for privatisation, but the modalities are yet to be decided. We don’t know how long it may take,” said AS Rajeev, Managing Director and CEO, Bank of Maharashtra.
Financial parameters
Rajeev further stated that the bank is in a comfortable position on financial parameters. Bank of Maharashtra has a loan book of ₹1.05-lakh crore, of which, the moratorium restructuring book is about ₹1,300 crore. “That is almost 1 per cent of the total loan book. We have already made provision of ₹1,500 crore to that. This is a floating provision under the covid impact. We are adequately covered for this,” he said, adding that the lender has already recovered around ₹850 crore for the nine months of the current fiscal.
“Additional ₹700 crore of recovery is in the pipeline for the remaining three months. So, total recovery for the current fiscal will be around ₹1,500 crore. In recoveries, and in the overall financial areas, we are in a comfortable position,” he said during his visit to Ahmedabad.
Agriculture, retail and MSME sectors account for about 61 per cent of the overall loan book, while 39 per cent is corporate loans.
“In the corporate sector, our exposure is about ₹40,000 crore, of which, one big account of ₹400-450 crore has chances of turning into NPA, but that is already classified and we have made provisioning for that. We don’t see any surprises in the remaining three months of the fiscal,” added Rajeev.
He informed that the bank’s gross NPA stood at 7.69 per cent and net NPAs at 2.59 per cent. “It is one of the best in the industry. We are expecting that this can be further brought down in March. Recovery measures are already in place,” he said.