Brokerage house Morgan Stanley has said the Reserve Bank’s asset quality review (QAR), which led to higher provisioning for bad loans, is not the “panacea” the system will continue reporting stress in 2016-17 as well.

“A multiple of 15x probably signifies asset quality stress is unlikely to decrease in 2016-17 from the current elevated levels… QAR is not the panacea for the sector,” the brokerage said in a note on Thursday.

“The QAR process was good and forced banks to recognize stress. But the problem is much bigger than just 2 percent of loans recognized as bad loans.”

It focused on recent private lender Axis Bank results, which recognized the review’s impact in the December quarter rather than the two quarters allowed by RBI. The lender reported a dip in net income for the first time in over 11 years and warned that asset quality would continue.

Axis Bank has placed over Rs 22,000 crore of corporate loans under the watch list of stressed accounts, which is 4 percent of its book, and warned that 60 percent of this might turn bad.

The findings contradict investor expectations that the asset quality cycle has bottomed out, and 2016-17 is in for some improvement.

Morgan Stanley explained that RBI probably focused only on loans already NPAs, but banks did not report them as such.

Implementing RBI recommendations led to the Bank of Baroda and IDBI Bank reporting the worst quarterly numbers ever in the December quarter and IDBI warning of more such pressure to follow. Bob had said it was done with all provisioning under QAR in December itself.