In was the seventh quarter of high slippages and weak growth for Bank of India. Third quarter slippages were up 112 percent at Rs 6716 crore versus Rs 3166 crore quarter on quarter (QoQ).

However, net interest income (NII) grew strongly at 23.6 percent year on year (YoY) at Rs 4118 crore versus Rs 3332.2 crore and 6.7 percent QoQ at Rs 4118 crore. YoY net profits came in at Rs 105.5 crore versus net loss of Rs 4737.6 crore.

Throwing more light on the quarterly performance Atanu Kumar Das, MD & CEO of the bank said, “Out of Rs 6,000 crore plus slippages, around Rs 5,000 only pertaining to three one-off accounts. So, but for these slippages, they would have been Rs 1500-1600 crore compared to Rs 3,200 crore in the previous quarter.” He said all the three accounts were from the NBFC sector.

Talking about the subdued loan growth, he said, advances segment saw a fairly good growth. "It was 10 percent growth in CASA and the ratio has also gone up. Advances have grown by about 7 percent year-on-year, i.e. December 2019 over December 2018. year-to-date (YTD) the growth is less than 2 percent, which is 3-4 percentage points below the industry rate," said Das in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

However, the bank has got a lot of sanctions in hand, and a good number of proposals mostly from in the government segment, PSU backed NBFCs and some other good NBFCs. "I think my outlook for Q4 or year-end is about 8-10 percent of growth in my advances,” he said.

Speaking about the net interest margin (NIM), he said, “The drastic improvement in NIMs was because of a resolution account where the bank got about Rs 1,600 crore. So, it is not normalized, it includes the one-off account and if we exclude that, NIM stood at 2.76 percent.

“NIM we will consistently try to maintain at around 3 percent like the best practices. So, 3 percent will be ideal for us and we will aim for that,” he added.