The country’s largest lender State Bank of India reiterated on Saturday that the telecom sector was under stress and the bank was doing extra provisioning for this. SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said, “The telecom sector is undergoing a lot of stress and the bank is extra provisioning due to this.” She said this when asked whether TRAI’s decision to reduce the IUC charges would affect incumbent operators like Vodafone, Airtel and Idea which were already feeling the heat of Reliance Jio’s disruptive move.
‘Under control’
On the bank’s NPA outlook for rest of the fiscal, Ms. Bhattacharya said, “We have probably reached the bottom. Slippages are under control although new sectors like telecom were showing stress.” Ms. Bhattacharya, who inaugurated the State Bank Institute of Management at New Town here said the merger of the associate banks with itself was a deep structural reform. “Results will come over a period of time. We will deliver the in the next three to four quarters as promised. On outlook of the economy post demonetisation and GST, she said the government would have to do some ‘heavy lifting’ like infrastructure development.