PNB Housing Fin to step up NPA recovery

PNB Housing Finance expects to manage its bad loans better from this month onwards, when the deadline of going soft on borrowers provided by the courts ends on August 31, and would ask the borrowers to start repaying if they are capable to do so, a top company official said.

The company's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) jumped to six per cent of the gross advances (or Rs 3,625 crore) in the quarter ended June 30, 2021, from 2.7 per cent by the end of June 2020, mainly on account of the impact of the second wave of the pandemic. The increase in NPAs is also on account of legal forbearance up to August 31, 2021, as per high court orders, the company said after its June quarter earnings last week. Various courts and high courts across the states indicated to the lenders not to take any legal or administrative action during the second wave of the pandemic, which mainly spread during April and May. "During the quarter, there were 45 days of lockdown. So, there was hardly any activity in this period. "We expect to manage these better from this month onwards even as we have managed to pull back some NPAs. We have pulled back about Rs 80 crore of NPA in July itself," Hardayal Prasad, managing director and CEO of PNB Housing Finance, told PTI in an interview. The restrictions led to a little bit of problems on the recovery front, he said.