Ziraat Times Special Report
Srinagar: With the Yes Bank in a state of collapse, an analysis of its overall working and performance in Jammu & Kashmir reveals a sorry state of dysfunction and non-performance.
As hundreds of the bank’s staff in J&K face an uncertain future and its depositors in a state of nervousness, Ziraat Times team conducted a thorough analysis of its working in J&K and has come up with this report.
Yes Bank in J&K
Yes Bank in J&K has a relatively small presence. It has presence in five out of the twenty districts in the former state with a total of seven branches – 2 in Srinagar, 2 in Jammu, 1 in Anantnag, 1 in Udhampur, 1 in Samba and 1 in Reasi.
A senior official of the bank in J&K told Ziraat Times that the bank’s staff were worried about their job security.
Some of the bank’s depositors Ziraat Times spoke to said they were shocked that they are able to withdraw only Rs 50,000 per month even as they have “trusted the bank with their lifetime savings.”
Status of deposits
As of 2019, Yes Bank’s deposits in J&K were Rs 435 crore. In comparison, the advances were a meagre Rs 25.4 crore. Consequently, it has the lowest cash-deposit (CD) ratio among private banks in J&K – a mere Rs 5.83 crore.
NPA situation
Even as the bank advances in J&K have remained small in comparison to its deposits, the bank’s Gross NPAs were a paltry 0.04 - again one of the lowest in the former state. That means that the bank’s borrowers in J&K were honestly returning the borrowed money to the bank.
How did the bank perform in providing credit to priority and non-priority sectors
Ziraat Times’ analysis of the bank’s performance vis-a-vis the annual credit plan for 2019-20 reveals that the bank has been below every target, often scoring zero on most of the achievement indicators.
For both priority and non-priority sectors, against a target of Rs 96.12 crore, the bank has disbursed only Rs 36.55 crore, meaning a mere 38 percent achievement.
Performance in the priority sectors
Yes Bank has had a total target of credit disbursal of Rs 76.83 crore in 2019-20 for priority sectors of agriculture, agri infrastructure, education, MSMEs and renewable energy. It has only disbursed Rs 8.34 crore, a 10.86% achievement.
In case of farm credit, the bank’s target for 2019-20 was Rs 10.8 crore. It provided zero credit.
For agriculture infrastructure, the bank’s target was Rs 93 lakhs in 2019-20, and, again, its achievement was zero.
In other ancillary activities in the agriculture sector, against a target of Rs 1.57 crore, the bank disbursed zero credit.
For small enterprises, credit target in 2019-20, the bank has achieved only 9.12%, while it has disbursed zero credit to medium enterprises during the year. The education sector has received 15.36% of the total credit target, while the housing sector has received only 2.67 % during the period.The bank has recorded ‘zero achievement’ in meeting the 2019-20 credit targets in social infrastructure, renewable energy and crop loan.
The only relatively better performance of the bank in 2019-20 has been in the disbursal of credit to micro enterprises, where it has met 69.79% of the total target.
On export credit, the bank has, again, recorded zero achievement. The total credit to medium and small enterprises has been only 20.64% of the target in 2019-20.
Bank’s performance in non-priority sectors
According to the State Level Bankers’ Committee figures, Yes Bank had a target of Rs 19.29 crore, it has disbursed Rs 28.21 crore, suggesting an achievement of 146%.
“This suggests how the bank has been prioritizing its meagre resources – mostly to non-priority sectors”, a financial expert told Ziraat Times.