IFCI sets NPA recovery target of Rs 600 cr for Q4 FY17

Hit hard by rising bad loans, country's oldest financial institution IFCI has set an ambitious recovery target of Rs 600 crore for the current quarter as part of the exercise to strengthen its balancesheet.

In the first 9 months of the current fiscal, the state-owned term lender mobilised about Rs 400 crore out of Rs 1,000 crore set for the entire fiscal.

"We intend to achieve targeted figure as we have identified 2-3 asset sales during the balance period of this fiscal," IFCI Deputy Managing Director Sanjeev Kaushik told PTI.

So, in this quarter the NPA (non-performing assets) recovery should be to the tune of Rs 600 crore and the firm has initiated process of sale to asset reconstruction companies, he said.

As far as other measures regarding NPA resolution are concerned, he said IFCI is also doing one-time settlement in many cases.

Mounting bad loans pushed IFCI into a Rs 45.17 crore loss for the third quarter ended December 2016 as against profit of Rs 154 crore in the same period a year ago.

Gross NPAs of the company increased more than three-fold to 25.8 per cent because of downgrading of certain standard accounts in current nine-month period and reduction in the loan portfolio due to prepayments and low credit offtake.

In absolute terms, there was addition Rs 2,970 crore to the gross NPA head during the quarter.

Terming the third quarter numbers as not satisfactory, Kaushik said the company has taken up the NPA issue very seriously and is focusing on recovery.

Due to new slippages requiring only 10 per cent provision, the Provision Coverage Ratio reduced to 44.6 per cent by December 31, from 57 per cent at end of 2015-2016.