INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A K Goel had earlier said the lender would ascertain its asset quality after the moratorium period.State-owned UCO Bank has not been able to
make an analytical study of its asset quality even after the end of the loan repayment moratorium period on August 31, heeding a Supreme
Court directive that no accounts shall be downgraded for now, an official said.On September 3, in a relief to stressed borrowers who are
facing hardship due to adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the top court had said that accounts which were not declared as
reservation over the idea of ''charging interest on interest'' from those borrowers who were willing to avail of the loan repayment
moratorium, a facility extended by the Reserve Bank of India during the pandemic times
UCO Bank MD and CEO A K Goel had earlier said the lender would like to ascertain its asset quality, once the moratorium period ceases on
orders," Mr Goel told PTI.With the RBI guidelines, the lender has started an exercise of making a list of eligible borrowers whose accounts
obtained the board approval for this purpose.Mr Goel said the lender has already prepared a standard operating procedure to identify
accounts which are really affected by the COVID-19 crisis
"If borrowers are really affected by job loss or salary cut, then the bank will go all out to lend them a helping hand," he said.According
to him, the bank would ask for salary slips of February 2020 and also that of August 2020.Asked about the credit off-take growth, Mr Goel
during the remaining period of the fiscal will be good, he said.Asked about the time frame for taking the bank out of the Prompt Corrective
Action (PCA) framework of RBI, he said, "We are waiting for the regulator to take a call."The levels of non-performing asset and capital
adequacy ratio at the end of the first quarter of the current fiscal would enable the bank to be out of the lending constraint purview, he
added.Meanwhile, the Kolkata-headquartered lender has secured the approval of its board of directors and shareholders to raise Rs 3,000
The bank said the money would be required for growth and provisioning of bad loans.The bank had posted a net profit of Rs 21.46 crore in the
first quarter of the current fiscal.
