Steps to trim NPAs bearing fruit, PSBS' Q2 profits jump 50%: FM

FINANCE MINISTER NIRMALA Sitharaman on Monday said that the country's 12 public sector banks (PSBS) recorded a 50% jump in their profitability in the second quarter of FY23 from a year before, asserting that the steps taken by the government in the past few years to reduce bad loans and bolster their balancesheets are showing "tangible results".

Together, the PSBs announced a net profit of ₹25,685 crore in the second quarter. With this, they recorded a total net profit of ₹40,991 crore in the first half of FY23, up 31.6% from a year before, Sitharaman said in a tweet.

Following the bad loan crisis, the most significant step announced by the government to tackle the crisis was capital infusion. In fact, the government infused as much as ₹3.3 trillion between FY16 and FY21 into state-run banks to shore up their capital base and help them cope with the bad loan crisis, caused by "indiscriminate lending" during the UPA era. In FY22, it allocated ₹15,000 crore for infusion.