Jammu, Oct 18: Battling with nearly 10 per cent of NPAs, J&K Bank Chairman Parvez Ahmed today said the bank will focus on the recovery of bad loans and consolidation to improve profitability in coming years. Further, the Chairman said that the bank has formulated a strategy for NPA recovery. “Now our focus will be on the consolidation and recovery of NPAs at J&K Bank. Once we focus on NPA, it will reduce the impact on the bottom-line and will improve the profitability in the years to come. It is area of concern for us,” Ahmed, who took over as new Chairman and CEO of the bank last week, told reporters at ‘Meetthe Press’ conference here. Jammu & Kashmir Bank Chairman asserted: “Once we are through with this consolidation phase, I assure you we will manage it successfully. We will head towards greater numbers.” The bank is facing a major challenge of soaring NPAs. As of March 2016, itss gross NPAs soared to Rs 4,368.62 crore. J&K Bank’s NPA is the range of 9.3 per cent on the basis of numbers as on June 30, 2016. “We will cleanup, consolidate and pay dividends to the stake holders. NPA is very much manageable. We have devised a policy to take care of this particular situation. With the global recovery system put in place, we are comfortably to bring down NPA to a desired level,” Ahmed said. “It will take us sometime to consolidate. But you see J&K Bank will ensure growth again as we will also be focusing on development and business generations of the bank”, he added. “The NPAs are in the range of around 10 per cent coupled with the stressed assets portfolio which is around 10 per cent more, that takes it to 20 per cent of our portfolio,” he said. Elaborating on the strategy, he said “We will be reducing our impaired exposure in the stressed asset portfolio through legal recourse, one-time settlements and through the asset reconstruction company.” The Chairman also said that “the banking sector across the country is facing this problem. Most of banks have similar number in terms of NPA as J&K Bank, we are not any exception. The disclosures that we made last time in which we made it clear the numbers are less than other PSU banks which have NPA on higher side.” He said that the disclosure was made to set the standards of transparency by acknowledging the problem. “Once we have acknowledged the problem, we are out to find a solution and measure to deal with NPA.” The CEO further said that “so, our focus will remain now on consolidation and cleaning of the balance sheet for the next 4-6 quarters with a moderate growth, without compromising on the quality, in the range on 10-15 per cent.” “Once we are sure that we are done with the cleaning of the balance sheet, we will again revive the growth trajectory and also ensure that we return to the good old numbers,” he added.