SBI revises NPAs to Rs 1,400 cr less; stock gains 1.6%

State Bank of India today said it has discovered an anomaly in the computation of stressed assets for the September quarter, which reduces the slippages by around Rs 1,400 crore but clarified that it has no bearing  on the final ratios as the upgrades have also gone down.

Accordingly, the nation's largest lender's fresh slippages stand revised at Rs 7,108 crore down from Rs 8,500 crore as reported on the earnings day, while its upgrades for the quarter also comes down to Rs 1,660 crore from the earlier Rs 3,000 crore, a senior bank official said.

"This is a rationalisation of the accounts and does not make any impact on the key ratios like net non-performing assets and gross non-performing assets," Chief General Manager for financial control Sunil Pant told PTI.

He added that the anomaly was discovered during the post-results analysts meet last Friday evening.

During the quarter, three accounts worth Rs 1,398 crore started as standard assets, became NPAs during the period, but later got upgraded, Pant said, adding this is a case of "inflated counting" which occurred at both the slippage as well as upgradation ends.

"The computer captured both the upgrade as well as the downgrade," he said, adding one of the account paid back in cash while two others were sent to the corporate debt restructuring cell, which resulted in the upgradation.

Reacting to the revision, the SBI stock--which was battered post-results due to concerns on asset quality--gained 1.59 percent to Rs 2,190.65 on the BSE, whose 30-share Sensex ended almost flat with a negative bias. Last Friday, SBI reported a 30.2 percent rise in net to Rs 3,658 crore on the back of lower provisions towards bad loans. But concerns on asset quality continued with rise in both gross and net NPAs. While gross NPAs jumped to 5.15 percent from 4.19 per cent a year ago, net NPAs rose to 2.44 percent from 2.04 per cent.