Bad loan clean-up prospects at Indian banks improving: Fitch

Demonetisation has had a net beneficial impact on the sector by triggering a sharp influx of low-cost deposits, says Fitch Ratings

GN Bureau | May 15, 2017


#Bad loan   #Banking   #Reserve Bank of India   #RBI   #NPA  


Recent regulatory actions in India suggest the authorities are making a more concerted push to tackle banks' bad loan problems, says Fitch Ratings.

"We believe that asset resolution will be a dominant theme in the sector over the next few years," it says.

In the short term, this is likely to create provisioning costs that will mean continued pressure on bank profits, and it is possible that further losses will push some weaker banks closer to breaching minimum capital requirements, unless they receive pre-emptive capital injections. However, the increased powers given to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to clean up asset quality, and to intervene in banks at an earlier stage when risks build, represents an important positive step toward ensuring a healthy banking system in the future.

The government's recent step to enhance the RBI's powers appears to be a signal to the regulator to assume a more interventionist approach to directly tackle banks' slow progress on bad loan resolution. RBI direction that pushes banks into initiating insolvency processes against borrowers could help to break a deadlock caused by concerns among bank officials that decisions on troubled borrowers will attract investigation by anti-corruption agencies.

Regulation to speed up resolution is the logical next step to follow the asset-quality review and other measures that increased recognition of bad loans over the last two years. This was important as there has been little evident progress on bad-loan resolution. We believe this natural progression reflects stronger intent and willingness from the authorities to address the problem. There will be significant implementation challenges, but asset resolution is likely to strengthen over the next few years, says a communiqué from Fitch Ratings.

The resolution of non-performing loans is likely to require significant haircuts if the re-priced loans are to attract attention from private investors and asset-reconstruction companies. State banks, which hold the bulk of stressed assets, are likely to report low returns on assets for FY17 and any material recovery is likely to be delayed as resolution crystallises losses and forces a higher level of provisioning.

Further losses at some of the weakest small- to medium-sized state banks could pressure them to shrink, or to eventually exit the system by entering into forced mergers. We expect the authorities to manage this in a way that is least disruptive for the financial system, but the process will entail risks for investors of capital securities, at least in the case of weakest banks. We believe it has become more likely that the number of state banks will fall in the medium term.

The large state banks will also face higher provisioning costs and we expect them to eventually receive more capital from the government than has already been budgeted. However, very weak loan growth could mean that banks will require less new capital by FYE19 than we had previously estimated. Bank loan growth reached a multi-decade low of around 5 percent in FY17, and looks set to remain low for the next one to two years.

Fitch says that demonetisation has had a net beneficial impact on the sector by triggering a sharp influx of low-cost deposits, and there are signs that banks are retaining a higher proportion of these deposits than they had initially predicted. The resulting decline in funding costs may not be enough to counter the pressures of income loss and weak growth, but should allow banks some more room to absorb higher provisions and lessen the impact on their capital.
 

Comments

 

Other News

Bird walks for youngsters to be held across India

Early Bird and the Rainmatter Foundation have announced five bird walks, led by naturalists, across India on June 10. The walks, to be held in Agartala, Dehradun, Mysore, Panjim, and Tirupati early in the morning, are part of the Rainmatter Foundation’s Walking Lightly campaign, being observed throug

India celebrates Environment Day with thrust on Mission LiFE

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India organized the World Environment Day on Monday with a thrust on Mission LiFE. The concept of LiFE, i.e., Lifestyle for Environment was introduced by prime minister Narendra Modi at the World Leaders` Summit in Glasgow at COP26, when

Green banking: an emerging way forward

Green Banking is an initiative taken by the banks to promote environment-friendly practices and reduce carbon footprint of their activities. Green financing (a part of ‘Green Banking’) is a broad term that can refer to a financial investment flowing into sustainable development projects and ini

GST revenue in May clocks 12% y-o-y growth

The gross Good & Services Tax (GST) revenue collected in the month of May, 2023 is ₹1,57,090 crore of which CGST is ₹28,411 crore, SGST is ₹35,828 crore, IGST is ₹81,363 crore (including ₹41,772 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹11,489 crore (including ₹1,057 crore collecte

Need local solutions to climate change: P Velrasu of BMC

Climate change rising temperature and sea levels are posing new risks for coastal cities. With population growth rate of 1%- 2% in India every year, Mumbai too is growing and is population will double from 20 million to 40 million in the coming years. The city is also at the risk of rising sea level. It ne

Civil Services 2022 Top 20 felicitated

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, MoS PMO, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space and MoS Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh on Tuesday interacted with and felicitated the first 20 All India Toppers of IAS/ Civil Services Exam 20

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter