MUMBAI, JAN 29: Bank of India has registered a net profit of Rs 160 crore for the nine-month period ended December 1998. The operating profit has fallen to Rs 440 crore from Rs 538 crore during the comparable period last fiscal. The operating profit is also down on a quarter-to-quarter basis with that in the third quarter at Rs 163 crore, down from Rs 172 crore.Total NPA provisions stood at Rs 165 crore for the nine-month period out of which the third quarter provisions account for Rs 65 crore with Rs 14 crore going towards investments and Rs 25 crore for taxation. Total provisioning in the third quarter was pegged at Rs 104 crore. The bank has increased its marked-to-market securities portfolio to 84 per cent, up by 4 per cent over the end-March 1998 position at 80 per cent.A senior BoI official explained that the fall in operating profit to Rs 440 crore from Rs 538 crore is not disturbing. "Out of the end-March 1998 operating profit of Rs 697 crore, we got Rs 31 crore from sale of premises inSingapore, Rs 30 crore from a single NPA settlement and Rs 32 crore from tax refunds, or in all Rs 93 from extraordinary items. The fall in operating figure in the first nine months to Rs 440 crore is small compared with the Rs 445 crore in the comparable period last year (after adjusting for extraordinary items," the official said.In a press release issued here on Friday, BoI said its global deposits increased to Rs 40,505 crore, an increase of 19.10 per cent over the corresponding period last fiscal. Domestic deposits grew by 17.70 per cent to Rs 32,066 crore with those of foreign branches by 29.21 per cent to Rs 8,439 crore.Global advances grew by 24.2 per cent to Rs 23,892 crore. Domestic credit grew by 18.6 per cent to Rs 17,360 crore with that of foreign branches by 41.9 per cent to Rs 6,532 crore.
