The country's largest lender, State Bank of India has accounted for a Rs. 674 crore growth in its non performing assets in the fourth quarter of the fiscal last ended. This rise in NPAs can be attributed to the corporate sector. The NPA structure of its agricultural loans has shown improvement along with the retail loan segment.

The big and medium corporates' NPAs has shown a sizeable growth in the fourth quarter accounting for a growth by as much as Rs. 1,062 crore while the manufacturing sector accounted for NPA growth by Rs. 107 crore. This rise has been nullified to some extent by the Rs. 74 crore decline in agricultural NPAs and Rs. 332 crore decline posted by the retail sector.

Of the total amount of assets which were restructured by the bank as per RBI which amounted to Rs. 16,796 crore, as much as Rs. 1,616 crore has slipped into the NPA category up to March 2010.

According to SBI Chairman, O.P.Bhatt, the growth in NPAs has been controlled which has led to lesser additions to the gross NPA level.

The bank made a loan loss provision of Rs. 2,187 crore in the quarter under review against Rs. 1,296 crore in the same quarter of 2008-09.