Indian Bank has reported a 37.1 per cent drop in its net profit at Rs. 330.58 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2012, against Rs. 525.93 crore in the same period in the previous year. Total income rose by 8 per cent to Rs. 3,786.69 crore from Rs. 3,505.26 crore with a notable rise in revenue from treasury operations. Retail banking also contributed to the rise in total income.
Addressing presspersons here on Saturday, Mr. T. M. Bhasin, Managing Director, said the lower profit was due to a provision of Rs. 40 crore towards pension corpus, adhoc provision of Rs. 15 crore towards expected wage revision and an extra allocation of Rs. 96 crore towards restructured assets.
Also the net profit in the third quarter of the previous year, included a credit of Rs. 52.33 crore due to reversal of provision in respect of tax liability. Besides, the bank earned a profit of Rs. 51 crore from forex portfolio, Mr. Bhasin said.
The bank had decided to reduce the base rate by 30 basis points to 10.20 per cent following the cut in repo rate (rate at which the RBI lends money to commercial banks) by 25 basis points by the RBI.
Cuts lending rate
It had also decided to effect a reduction of 25 basis points in its BPLR (benchmark prime lending rate) to 14.50 per cent effective February 9.
The total business of the bank rose by 13.55 per cent year-on-year to Rs. 2.35 lakh crore from Rs. 2.07 lakh crore. Deposits were up by 13.54 per cent at Rs. 1.35 lakh crore and advances by 13.56 per cent at Rs. 99,983 crore.
