Bad loan clean-up takes toll on state banks' earnings

Punjab National Bank (PNB), India's fourth-biggest state-run lender by assets, posted a 93 percent fall in December-quarter profit, and said it expected bad loans to rise further in the current quarter. More than two dozen lenders majority owned by the government dominate India's banking sector with two thirds of the assets. Indian banks, burdened by their highest stressed-assets ratio in 13 years, have been asked by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to treat some troubled accounts as non-performi