Commercial banks have drastically brought down their non-performing assets in 2003-04 despite shifting to a tighter 90-day income recognition norm during the year from the earlier 180-day rule.

The financials of banks that have announced results so far reveal that, except of Corporation Bank, the others have reined in their NPAs. In fact, all of them now have net NPAs below 3 per cent of their net assets.

The decline is sharpest for Indian Bank and Vijaya Bank in the public sector and ICICI Bank in the private sector.

ICICI Bank's net NPAs in March 2004 fell to 2.87 per cent of net assets from 4.92 per cent in March 2003. This is mainly on account of ICICI Bank selling Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) of bad loans to the Asset Reconstruction Company India Ltd.

In the private sector, HDFC Bank and IDBI Bank have the lowest NPAs at 0.2 per cent of their net advances. HDFC Bank halved its net NPAs in March 2004 to 0.2 per cent from 0.4 per cent a year ago.

The net NPAs of IDBI Bank have come down from 0.9 per cent at the end of March 2003 to 0.2 per cent at the end of March 2004. Another private sector bank, UTI Bank, has brought down its net NPAs from 2.26 per cent to 1.1 per cent over the year.

In the public sector, both Vijaya Bank and Andhra Bank have less than 1 per cent net NPAs. Andhra Bank has brought down its NPAs from 1.79 per cent in March 2003 to 0.93 per cent in March 2004. Vijaya Bank's net NPAs now stand at 0.91 per cent, down from 2.61 per cent at the end of March 2003.

Indian Bank has managed to cut its NPAs drastically, from 6.51 per cent to 2.71 per cent over the year. Corporation Bank has, however, shown a rise in NPAs from 1.65 per cent to 1.80 per cent during the year.

Corporation Bank's provisioning for NPAs for 2003-04 dipped to Rs 96.36 crore (Rs 963.6 million) compared with Rs 174.19 crore (Rs 1.741 billion) in 2002-03.

In contrast, Andhra Bank jacked up its NPA provisioning to Rs 242.53 crore (Rs 2.425 billion) from Rs 179.43 crore (Rs 1.794 billion).

Vijaya Bank, too, raised its provisioning for NPAs to Rs 226.58 crore (Rs 2.265 billion) against Rs 192.60 crore (Rs 1.926 billion) in the previous year.