Lakshmi Vilas Bank reported a net loss of ₹622 crore for fourth quarter ended March 31, 2018, against a net profit of ₹52 crore for the corresponding quarter last year. Revenue declined by 15 per cent to ₹741 crore (₹865 crore).

The drop in net profit was due to ‘very large’ slippage in NPAs during the quarter, said the Bank’s Managing Director and CEO, P Mukherjee.

“There was slippage of around ₹1,600 crore during the quarter. However, the good news is that thanks to the slippage, my book is more or less clean. Going forward, I am extremely hopeful that this situation will not remain,” Mukherjee told BusinessLine .

“In our bank, thanks to this fall, very little is left for slippage. Going forward, we won’t see such NPAs from our side,” he said.

Of the ₹1,600 crore, around 26 per cent was infrastructure accounts and 22 per cent steel accounts. Some of it are recoverable, partially, perhaps. “In the new year, we expect to recover significantly. I would be surprised if we don’t recover a very substantial sum,” he said.

The slippages have been partially increased due to shifting of some of the restructure accounts of NPA as per the RBI’s direction in February.

For the year ended March 31, 2018, the bank reported a net loss of ₹584 crore against a profit of ₹256 crore.

The bank said that with a focus on streamlining and strengthening the credit after sanction operations, the commercial banking operations group has taken over the processing and monitoring of corporate and MSME exposures.

On the BSE, the bank’s stock priced closed at ₹95.70, up 1.43 per cent.

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