Oriental Bank of Commerce has reported rise in net profits at Rs310.3 crore, albeit marginally, for the quarter ended March 31, 2014 even as it has shown a reduction in costs of deposits. The state-owned bank's net profit stood at Rs307.94 crore in the year-ago period.
“The total income of the bank increased to Rs5,655.36 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2014 from Rs 4,564.53 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2013,”said OBC chairman SC Bansal.
For the full-year ended March, the bank's net profit declined 14.2 per cent to Rs1,139.41 crore from Rs 1,327.95 crore in 2012-13. “This has been on account of higher tax provisioning following new accounting guidelines,”said Bansal. He said that the provisioning of taxes in the Q4 had gone up by Rs142 crore.
Expressing optimism in the economic recovery, Bansal said that he expected that with the expected recovery, expectations of a stable government as well as of a visible inflationary control, there was more room for moderation of the interest rates in the coming months. “This may lead us to tweak the interest rates..” he added. Meanwhile gross NPA stood at 3.99 per cent while net NPA stood at 2.82 per cent.
Total income increased to Rs 20,962.75 crore for the entire year ended March 31, 2014, from Rs19,359.49 crore in the previous fiscal.Net Interest Income has shown an increase of 7.82 per cent toRs1,308 .70 crore from Rs1,213.77 crore for the quarter ended this March.
The board of directors of the bank have proposed a dividend of Rs3.60 per share in addition to an interim dividend of Rs4.00 per share for 2013-14.Shares of OBC were trading at Rs249.55, up 0.2 per cent, from their previous close in afternoon trade on the BSE and closed at Rs247.55 down by 0.26 per cent.