New Delhi: On Tuesday,  Punjab National Bank (PNB) posted 7.12 percent increase in net profit at Rs 246.51 crore for its third quarter ended December 31, 2018, driven by lower provisioning for bad loans.

While PNB, which which was involved in a Rs 14,356-crore scam by Nirav Modi, had reported net profit of Rs 230.11 crore for the corresponding quarter a year ago. The bank's total income, fell by 2.64 percent to Rs 14,854.24 crore for the quarter under review from Rs 15,257.5 crore in the year-ago quarter.

PNB managing director and CEO Sunil Mehta said the company's financial numbers are back in black.Mehta said "We have honoured all our commitments. Our bank, as on date, has provided all for that incident (Nirav Modi fraud). We suffered because of the one-off incident which has now been absorbed by the bank,"

On PNB's asset quality, the bank said, its gross non-performing assets (NPAs) as a percentage to total advances rose to 16.33 percent from 12.11 percent in the year-ago period.Its net NPAs, however, came down to 8.22 percent from 8.90 percent at the end of December 2017, PNB said in a BSE filing. Shares of PNB were trading 1.98 percent higher at Rs 74.60 apiece on BSE.

also read Gold price shows an upward trend, Silver gains…check out today prices here…