J.P. Dua (right) and D. Sarkar in Calcutta on Wednesday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, Nov. 2: Allahabad Bank today reported a 21.22 per cent growth in net profit for the quarter ended September 30 without much deterioration in bad loans as witnessed by most other banks.

Net profit stood at Rs 488 crore for the second quarter against Rs 402.57 crore in the year-ago period.

The profit growth came on the back of an improvement in net interest margin to 3.68 per cent against 3.34 per cent in the year-ago period and 3.38 per cent at the end of March this year.

Gross non-performing assets at the end of September stood at the same level of 1.77 per cent as it was a year ago.

“On a sequential basis, our net NPA has declined to 0.69 per cent from 0.79 per cent at the end of March this year,” said J.P. Dua, chairman and managing director, Allahabad Bank.

“We had put immense thrust on recovery of bad loans resulting in a cash recovery of Rs 433 crore,” he added.

The bank’s executive director D. Sarkar said, “A large part of our net profits came from core banking business as is evinced from that fact that our operating profit for the quarter increased 21.47 per cent year-on-year to Rs 949.29 crore.”

Net profit for the six months ended September stood at Rs 906.14 crore, 20.87 per cent higher than the previous year, and operating profits grew 23.74 per cent to Rs 1,838.91 crore.

The Allahabad Bank scrip today closed at Rs 161.05 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, up 8.05 per cent from yesterday’s close of Rs 149.05.

Andhra Bank

Andhra Bank has reported a 4.29 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 316 crore in the second quarter compared with Rs 303 crore in the same period a year ago.

However, the net interest margin slipped to 3.82 per cent from 3.91 per cent in the same period last year.