Bank of Baroda (BoB) posted one of the worst performances of the Indian banking sector for Q4FY16. For this one quarter alone, the bank’s loss was at a staggering Rs,3230 crore despite a 5% (YoY) rise in NII at Rs.3330 crore. Its loss in Q3 stood at Rs.3342 crore. This loss would have been higher but for a tax write back of Rs.1055  crore. The loss was mainly on account of the higher provisioning for the quarter at Rs.6858 crore v/s Rs.6164 crore (QoQ) and v/s Rs.1817 crore (YoY). Provision coverage ratio bettered from 52.70% to 60.09% (YoY).

The Bank’s asset quality was not as bad as the loss. Gross NPA was up from 9.68% v/s 9.99% (QoQ) and Net NPA actually declined from 5.06% to 5.67%.

This was probably the peak of bad loans for BoB and the clean-up act is more or less nearing an end. FY17 could see a much cleaner book. The Bank expects to add about Rs.5000 crore of bad loans during the current fiscal year ending in March to current outstanding bad loans of about Rs.4,05,000 crore.