mumbai may 4 lt finance today reported a 33 per cent rise in net profit for the march quarter at rs 316 crore on higher loan growth and better asset quality following its decision to exit noncore businesses earlier in the year for the full year the nonbanking subsidiary of the engineering major larsen tubro reported a 22 per cent in net income at rs 1042 crore while disbursement grew 64 per cent in the reporting quarter for the full year the same clipped at 23 per cent all the business verticals did exceedingly well during the year after we successfully exited the noncore businesses like equipment finance as a result the share of this business now has halved to 4 per cent of the total business from 85 per cent earlier all this has had our fee income growing at 87 per cent in the quarter and 47 per cent for the full year md ceo dinanath dubhashi told the better performance was achieved via a combination of growth in the focused businesses exit from noncore businesses increase in fee income and reduction in cost income ratio which has come down by 23 per cent he added on its exit from noncore businesses he said they sold rs 327 crore of this portfolio in q4 following which only rs 2671 crore of this portfolio remains with them which as a percentage of total assets is only 4 per cent now as against 85 per cent a year ago its focused lending businesses include rural finance housing finance and wholesale finance the asset of which grew 20 per cent while rural finance rose 135 per cent to rs 7405 crore housing finance clipped at 19 per cent to rs 6904 crore wholesale finance grew at a faster pace of 257 per cent to rs 34996 crore taking the total focused lending businesses to rs 49305 crore recording a total growth of 228 per cent for the year dubhashi said on the rise in fee and other income he said this rose from rs 495 crore to rs 722 crore in fiscal 2017 a growth of 46 per cent which as a percentage of assets has gone up from 094 per cent in fiscal 2016 to 118 per cent in fiscal 2017 on asset quality he said the best improvement was in the rural portfolio which resulted in net npa ratio coming down substantially from 382 per cent to 289 per cent while the gross npa ratio remained almost flat at 494 per cent in absolute terms gross npas rose from rs 2757 crore to rs 3146 crore while net npas came down from rs 2145 crore to rs 1799 crore that apart it has set aside rs 491 crore as accelerated provisions which rose manifold form rs 47 crore a year ago taking its provision coverage to 4282 per cent from 2219 per cent meanwhile the company also said leading chartered accountant shailesh haribhakti currently the