RCom debt among Rs 6,000 crore NPAs put on the block by Bank of Baroda

Bank of Baroda (BoB) has put on sale non-performing assets (NPAs) worth nearly Rs 6,000 crore, including its Rs 1,838-crore exposure to Reliance Communications (RCom). The accounts are being offered on an all-cash basis.

A notification inviting expressions of interest (EoIs) from asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) for 49 bad-loan accounts worth Rs 5,928 crore said the EoIs, with indicative prices, must be filed by March 7.

Some of the other large exposures on the list are GVK Power Goindwal Sahib (Rs 266 crore), Asian Colour Coated Ispat (Rs 263 crore) and GMR Chhattisgarh Energy (Rs 218 crore).

BoB has been trying to sell off some of the accounts on the list for much of the current financial year. For instance, GVK Gautami Power (Rs 91 crore), GVK Power Goindwal and GMR Chhattisgarh have all appeared on BoB’s sale notices earlier.

This follows the lender’s bid to sell its exposure to Bhushan Power & Steel (Rs 1,550.52 crore) in December 2018. During the quarter ended December, BoB recovered Rs 1,064 crore by selling three assets. In Q2FY19, it had got Rs 1,042 crore from the sale of two accounts, while one account undergoing insolvency proceedings was sold in Q1FY19, yielding Rs 388 crore. So far in FY19, BoB has recovered Rs 2,494 crore from NPA sales to ARCs.

Some banks have taken to selling off bad loans where recoveries through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) have been long-drawn.

However, this route has not always yielded satisfactory results. One of the large accounts that remain unresolved is that of Essar Steel for which State Bank of India had announced an auction in January.

The bank is reported to have shelved the auction subsequently after Bank of America Merrill Lynch emerged as the only bidder for its Rs 15,431-crore exposure to the steel producer. BoB has already offloaded its exposure to Essar Steel in 2018.

Bankers say they have found it more feasible to unilaterally sell their exposures to some accounts and make cash recoveries rather than wait for resolution to be achieved.

“We are selling NCLT exposures in some cases where we get cash recoveries,” an executive with a mid-sized public-sector bank said. “We are making it clear to buyers that we want the cash in 60 days.”

Bank Of Baroda