ET Now: What is your first thought on the numbers?
The headline numbers look decent. In fact, last quarter also was relatively better. Now as things are picking up, SBI being the largest bank is reporting a stable set of numbers and I am really quite positively surprised by the NPA numbers. Even if I consider the Supreme Court dispensation, then also the GNPA numbers are not very high. So the asset quality seems to have surprised on the positive side and things are not as bad as we thought during the initial quarters of this financial year.
The biggest issue is what is the quantum of restructuring and all those will be visible in the coming quarters but that also will not be very significant because I am looking at the other banks’ results and so far things are not turning out to be as bad as we thought in the last quarter also.
So a different set of numbers for SBI and now with the Budget provisions giving a lot of facility for banks in terms of a bad bank, SBI being the largest will have a lot of options to offload some of the NPAs and coming quarters will also be good. I am satisfied with this quarter’s results and no doubt I was a bit conservative in the previous quarter on the performance. I was not expecting things to improve so fast but really things have turned very fast for the economy and for the bank and so a good set of numbers from SBI.
