The State Industrial Investment Corporation of Maharashtra (SICOM) has scripted a remarkable comeback story with the key financial ratios of the company bouncing back to black along with an improvement in business while its stressed assets declined substantially leading to overall profitability. The company has achieved the comeback by successfully tackling bad loans, which once blotted its books, along with overall cost reduction practices and strict financial control and liquidity management.
Top company officials said that in a period of one and half years, SICOM could recover as much as Rs.177 crore, worth of sticky loans. “Further, through our treasury portfolios, additional liquidity of about Rs.147.5 crore was infused. In place of the negative carry of Rs.11 crore, there is a positive carry of Rs. 1 crore for FY 23,” Dr. Nitin B. Jawale, a career civil servant and the Managing Director of SICOM, said. Carry is a term used in finance to denote the difference between a firm’s income and expenditure.
“Due to some good recoveries around the third quarter of FY 2022-23, our CRAR (Capital-to-Risk-Weighted Assets or Capital Adequacy Ratio) went up to 21% and the Leverage Ratio went down to a level of 5.64 times of the equity. We have set an internal deadline to steer clear of the default situation with the State Public Sector Units (PSUs) soon. We have also submitted a board-approved action plan to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to come out of the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework,” he added. SICOM was placed under PCA by RBI after a spike in its net-NPAs a couple of years back.
SICOM was set up by the Government of Maharashtra in 1966, to act as a catalyst for the industrial development of the State by providing financial assistance and advisory services to entrepreneurs. SICOM raises capital from the State PSUs and onward lend it to last mile entrepreneurs for taking up industrial activities.
Through the six decades of its existence, SICOM, as a Systemically Important NBFC (NBFC-ND-SI as designated by RBI) helped promote over 8,000 industrial units in the State of which some of the prominent names include Future Group, Lupin Laboratories, Supreme Industries, Bajaj Auto, Jindal Iron and Steel.
Chips started going down for SICOM by the end of FY 2020-21 when the general economic slowdown induced by COVID-19 pandemic hit the company badly leading to piling up of NPAs, The PCA framework put the company on a sticky wicket as drying up of fresh business started choking its cash flow. This has left SICOM with little options but to aggressively recover NPAs.
The company is also planning to raise capital from State-run PSUs since it is now in a position to restart its industrial lending operations. SICOM is also planning to focus on the industrialization of unindustrialized and backward areas of the state.
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