New Delhi, May 11 (KNN) With a view to minimize the loan portfolio risks, the Public Sector lender Indian Bank is planning to shift its focus from corporate sector to agriculture, retail and MSME (RAM) industries gradually.

Terming Agriculture a risk-prone sector, an executive from the bank during an event that held in Chennai said that returns from agriculture are way higher than the returns from corporate.

Quantifying the returns, he said “we get nearly 2 percent more than the standard 7.8 percent; 1.5 percent comes from the Central government subsidies and about 50 basis points from Basel.

Diversifying the loan portfolio into the RAM sector, we are actually becoming risk averse, he added saying that this year it has marked a growth of 26.12 percent.

Discussing the financial report of the bank, it has been reported that in the 4th quarter of year that ended on March 31, 2018 the banks provisions and contingencies stood at Rs 1,546.33 crore, more than double from Rs 806.91 crore in the year-ago period.

Further, it reported a 59% decline in the net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, due to the hardening of the bond yields and as provisions for bad loans more than doubled.

However, Indian Bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPA) stood at Rs 11,990.14 crore as of March 31, which was Rs 9,865.13 crore in the year-ago period.

The company also said that if the RBI had not passed the stricter NPA norms in the Feb this year, the company would have achieved the target of 3% NPA this year.

Further, the bank informed that it has observed a reduction of Rs 2000 crores in stressed assets during the year due to the recovery of the steel sector and growth from the automobile industry.