SBI Q2 net profit surges 25 per cent

Mumbai: Beating expectations, country’s largest lender State Bank of India on Friday reported 25.12 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 3,879 crore for the September quarter, driven by drop in bad loans, higher non-interest income and robust loan growth. The non-interest income jumped 35.58 per cent to Rs 6,197 crore from Rs 4,571 crore, primarily boosted by a hefty Rs 485 crore repatriation of profits from its foreign operations, which on an average contributes to a fourth of the bank’s business.

Similarly, its treasury income jumped multiple times to Rs 1,493 crore from a little over Rs 490 crore a year ago. SBIs chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said excluding this one-time gain by way of repatriation of profits from foreign branches, which she described as the first in the bank’s history, profit would have still been a healthy 15 per cent. “The Rs 485 crore has definitely helped us in reporting higher profit. This growth is because of increase in loan book and our higher income from treasury operations which has gone up,” she said.