The 14 regional rural banks (RRBs) under the country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) have posted four-fold growth in net profit at Rs 1,004.28 crore in FY21, despite substantial provision for pension of Rs 1,457.69 crore. Their net profit was Rs 248.8 crore in FY20. These banks continued to focus on improving earnings from their core banking business, strengthening the fee income streams and maintaining control on operating costs, according to SBI’s annual report for 2020-21 (FY21).
With 4,726 branches, the lenders improved their business profile despite facing the brunt of macro-economic shock and the Covid-19 pandemic. Their deposits grew 13 per cent to Rs 1.05 trillion and advances expanded 15.06 per cent to Rs 66,551 crore in FY21.
As a planned strategy to diversify the portfolio, RRBs expanded their housing loans by 20.35 per cent, while gold loans grew 91.73 per cent, SBI said.
The asset quality profile also improved. The combined gross non-performing assets (NPAs) ratio declined to 5.44 per cent, from 5.96 per cent at end of March 2020. The Net NPA ratio was 2.16 per cent, against 2.56 per cent in March 2020.
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