Mumbai, Jan 27 (IANS): Lending major Axis Bank's net profit for the third quarter of 2020-21 fell 36 per cent due to higher provisioning.

Accordingly, the bank's net profit fell to Rs 1,116.6 crore from Rs 1,757 crore reported during the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

The bank said profit after tax for the quarter was adversely impacted to the extent of Rs 1,050 crore on account of prudent expenses and provisioning charges.

However, the banking major's net interest income grew by 14 per cent to Rs 7,373 crore from Rs 6,453 crore reported during the like period of the previous fiscal.

"Net interest margin (NIM) for Q3FY21 was 3.59 per cent as against 3.57 per cent for Q3FY20," the bank said in a statement.

As per the statement, specific loan loss provisions for Q3FY21 were Rs 1,053 crore, compared to Rs 2,962 crore in Q3 last year.

"The bank has made provisions on "90+ DPD" accounts not classified as NPA pursuant to the Supreme Court judgment, at rates that would have applied to these accounts per extant provisioning rules for NPA in the banks, amounting to Rs 3,899 crore during the quarter."

"The bank holds cumulative provisions of Rs 11,856 crore at the end of Q3FY21. It is pertinent to note that this is over and above the NPA provisioning included in our PCR calculations."

Notably, these cumulative provisions translate to a standard asset coverage of 2.08 per cent as on December 31, 2020.

"As on 31st December 2020, the bank's reported Gross NPA and Net NPA levels were 3.44 per cent and 0.74 per cent respectively as against 4.18 per cent and 0.98 per cent as on 30th September 2020."

"Absent the standstill to asset classification post August 31, 2020 pursuant to the Supreme Court judgment, the bank would have been required to report GNPA per RBI's extant IRAC norms for asset classification."

Accordingly, the GNPA ratio as per said IRAC norms as on Dec 31 would have been 4.55 per cent and Net NPA ratio would have been 1.19 per cent.

"This reflects decline of 45 bps and 90 bps respectively on a YoY basis and an increase of 27 bps and 16 bps on GNPA and NNPA respectively on a sequential basis."