GTB recovers Rs 300 crore

New Delhi: Global Trust Bank has recovered about Rs 300 crore from critical and non-performing asset (NPA) accounts over the last 12 months.

Special recovery cells have been set up and dedicated teams are formed to monitor critical accounts. Necessary legal actions have been initiated under Debt Recovery Tribunal and new Securitisation Act. All these efforts made by the bank in recovering the dues have yielded positive results.

The bank has also put in place adequate safeguards to contain any additional loan delinquency. To this end, the bank has taken a number of steps including scaling down of exposure limits, strengthening the credit policy, reducing/exiting from high risk portfolios and reorganising credit function. Besides the above, other positive and important developments are happening in terms of securitising the existing NPAs and critical accounts.

The board decided to have a comprehensive assessment of the NPAs and provisions required thereof. In this regard the bank is working very closely with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which entails some more time for finalisation of accounts for the year ended March 2003.

Accordingly, the bank has sought permission from the RBI for extension of time for a period of three months for publishing the accounts of the financial year 2002-03, that is up to September 2003. The board of directors of the bank has taken on record the RBI approval at its meeting held on 25 June 2003 and decided to publish the financial results after a thorough review of the NPAs and provisions to ensure a proper representation of the actual position.

The bank has also initiated the capital raising exercise to improve the capital adequacy ratio and also to meet the anticipated growth in business volumes. Towards this, the bank has already increased its authorised capital from Rs 200 crore to Rs 350 crore in March 2003 and appointed Lazard India Ltd as its financial advisor.

All the above steps are expected to have a positive impact on the balance sheet.