While the UCO Bank has been exposed to Adani Group of companies, this exposure is limited and, therefore, the institution remains “fairly insulated”, its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Soma Sankara Prasad said.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Prasad said: “We do have exposure, but it is less than 1% of our loan book. It is about ₹ 1,400 crore exposure. Our loan book is about ₹1.5 lakh crore.”
Mr. Prasad said that loans are against underlying assets with strong cash flows. “They are generating cashflows, I am getting repayment regularly and underlying solid assets are there. There is nothing to worry about as such. I have nothing to do with the share price. I have not given a loan against the stock of the company,” he said.
Sharing the performance, Mr. Prasad said that the UCO Bank has seen a growth in advances by about 21% and deposits by around 11%. He added said that the gross NPA last March went down from 7.89 to 5.63 and net NPA was down from 2.7 to 1.66.
“The reason why we are doing well is that we have very good growth in business which is giving us good income. The second thing is, our recovery has been more than say slippage in accounts,” he said.
Last year was the first time that the UCO Bank made a “substantial profit” of ₹930 crore as against March 2021 when the bank saw a profit of a little over ₹ 100 crore. Now, as against a target of ₹ 1,500 crore, the bank by end of the December, has ₹ 1,281 crore. “That means we will be overshooting the target. Our December quarter, we achieved a profit of ₹653 crore, which is the highest ever quarterly profit in the 80-year history of the bank,” he said.
The bank is now in the process of increasing the number of branches to 200 with 110 branches already opened.
Published - February 24, 2023 08:03 pm IST
