State-owned UCO Bank Tuesday said its net loss has narrowed to Rs 1,552.02 crore in March 2019 quarter, amid a persistent high level of bad loan ratio. The bank had reported a net loss of Rs 2,134.36 crore during the corresponding January-March quarter of 2017-18. Sequentially, the loss in March 2019 quarter was higher than Rs 998.74 crore in the December quarter of 2018-19. Thus, for the entire financial year, there was a net loss of Rs 4,321.09 crore, against Rs 4,436.37 crore loss in 2017-18. Its total income in the March quarter rose to Rs 4,148.52 crore as against Rs 3,424.65 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

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In full 2018-19, the total income moved up to Rs 15,844.14 crore as against Rs 15,141.13 crore. The Kolkata-headquartered bank witnessed worsening in its gross bad loan ratio at 25 per cent of the gross advances at end-March 2019, against 24.64 per cent by the end of March 2018. In the December quarter, the non-performing asset (NPA) ratio was 27.39 per cent. However, the net NPAs were trimmed to 9.72 per cent by the end of 2018-19 as against the year-ago period's 13.10 per cent. It was at 12.48 per cent by the end of December 2018.

Provisioning requirement for bad loans for March 2019 quarter stood at Rs 2,601.80 crore as against Rs 3,133.52 crore a year ago. The bank's total assets grew to Rs 2,30,484.08 crore as on March 31, 2019, from Rs 2,16,056.18 crore a year ago. UCO Bank also showed a divergence of (-) Rs 2.68 crore in gross NPAs for 2017-18, and (-) Rs 663.44 crore in net NPAs. The divergence in provisioning stood at Rs 660.76 crore in 2017-18, it said.

Thus, on an adjusted basis, there was net loss of Rs 5,099.81 crore during 2017-18. Shares of UCO Bank closed 4.99 per cent up at Rs 17.90 apiece on the BSE.