Mumbai (Maharashtra): Government-owned GIC Housing Finance has registered a net profit of Rs 50.99 crore for the quarter ending March 31.
For the entire fiscal 2018-19, the company clocked a net profit of Rs 171.85 crore. “There is a reduction in profit compared to previous fiscal, which was due to conscious call taken by the company to go slow on disbursements,” said Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Neera Saxena.
“We had taken a conscious call to go slow on disbursement because of tough market condition as a fallout of IL&FS episode,” she said. “We had gone for good asset quality and concentration was on the salaried segment.”
Saxena said the borrowing costs also went up from 7.82 per cent in the previous fiscal to 8 per cent in the year under review due to tough market conditions.
GIC Housing Finance took over house building as an advanced portfolio of one of its promoter company to the tune of Rs 144 crore during the fourth quarter.
Loan disbursement for the year worked out to Rs 3,502 crore as against Rs 3,621 crore in FY 18. However, total income went up 10 per cent to Rs 1,228 crore against Rs 1,112 crore in the previous year.
The salaried loan portfolio increased by 77 per cent from 67 per cent a year ago. However, self-employed loan portfolio came down to 23 per cent from 33 per cent.
The net NPA currently stands at 0.56 per cent as against 0.21 per cent a year ago. The gross NPA percentage is 2.61 and GIC Housing Finance plans to bring it down to 2.1 per cent by the end of current fiscal 2019-20.
The company has recommended a dividend if 55 per cent, that is Rs 5.50 per equity share.
“We think that market should improve with GST reduction on affordable housing to 1 per cent from 8 per cent by the government,” said Saxena in a statement. “Liquidity in the market will improve further with government’s seeing real estate sector as a priority sector.”
GIC Housing Finance has 75 branches across the country. It plans to add five branches this year in tier 3 and tier 3 cities.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]