For the first time in its over two centuries of history, the nation's largest lender State Bank of India, which had reported 5.73 per cent of its assets as bad loans in the December quarter, is going all out to stem the rot by offloading around Rs 5,000 crore of its Rs 67,799 crore dud assets to ARCs before the end of the month.

The move comes ahead of the tighter provisioning norms kicking in from next April, which the central bank had in May last year announced when it had more than doubled the provisioning for restructured loans to 5 from 2 per cent.

"There are 14 ARCs functioning today, and we have invited many of them to pick up our stressed loans of around Rs 5,000 crore. We will definitely be offloading at least a large portion of this to the highest bidders. The process should be concluded before the end of the month," a senior SBI official said here today.

[Source: Press Trust of India]