Moody's retain negative outlook on Indian banks on high corporate leverage

In yet another worrying development for banking sector, international rating agency, Moody’s while retaining its negative outlook for the Indian banking sector, has underscored that high leverage in the corporate sector could prevent any meaningful recovery in asset quality of the banking system over the next 12-18 months, regardless of moderate rebound in economic growth. The rating agency since November 2011 has maintained a negative outlook for the banking system.

Notably, the report of Moody just comes a day after another global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P’s), in its Country Risk Assessment report on the Indian banking sector, underscored that country’s plan to grant new banking licenses to companies could heighten the risk for banking sector as the aggressive market share gaining tactics, like underwriting standards or undercutting prices by new entrants may adversely impact the banking sector's stability.

Further, Moody’s specified that negative outlook on the Indian banking system pertains mainly to the public-sector banks, which represent more than 70% of total banking-system assets, since these banks have experienced higher growth rates in non-performing and restructured loans, as well as greater weakening in profits, than their private sector peers. 

The agency has estimated that India's corporate sector had an average debt-to-equity ratio of more than 3 times, and would need a stronger economic recovery than currently projected by the credit agency to bring down the leverage.

Moody’s in its report, highlighted that continuing poor asset quality, wherein the NPAs levels were set to touch 4.5% of the system, would require continued provisioning and strengthened capital buffer and highlighted that after provisioning, profitability of public sector banks would generate insufficient internal capital for loan growth. It added that poor asset quality and low capitalization remained to be the primary concerns for Indian public sector banks, which were not expected to improve much in the coming 18 months.