The Hindu Business Line : Indian Bank sets business target at Rs 5,000 cr

ENCOURAGED by the Rs 33.22-crore net profit for the year ended March 31, 2002 - its first in six years - Ms Ranjana Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director, Indian Bank, is targeting a Rs 5,000-crore business for the bank in the current year.

Calling it the culmination of the aspirations of 22,000-strong workforce of the 95-year-old bank, Ms Kumar attributed the turnaround of the bank to the "strong fundamentals'" inherent in the bank and clear sense, among the employees, on the direction to be taken by the bank.

Addressing an informal gathering of newspersons here on Friday, Ms Kumar said that for the current year, the bank would continue its focus on recoveries and was looking at a 12 per cent growth in deposits, particularly low-cost deposits.

The bank was also looking at recruiting around 250 officers. No recruitment had taken place for the past seven years with the average age profile in the bank at around 47 years. According to Ms Kumar, in some specialists' cadres, there had been no promotion for the past 10 years.

In the past two years, around 100 branches had been merged and the bank has identified an additional 40 branches for merger this year.

As part of its restructuring process, the bank had to merge its subsidiaries. While the bank's AMC had been sold to Tata AMC, its housing finance subsidiary will be merged with the bank. It was still scouting for a partner for its merchant-banking subsidiary. For the AMC, it had earned around Rs 62 lakh.

To boost credit, there were several new schemes on the anvil such as loans to small eateries in cities to the tune of around Rs 35-50 lakh. The bank was also talking to bigger banks for a berth in a consortium on some "quality accounts" and in the city of Mumbai alone, the bank was targeting around Rs 50-75 crore through these consortiums, said Ms Kumar.

The bank had received its recap funds of Rs 1,300 crore through bonds on March 31, 2002. A further recap of around Rs 770 crore was expected, which would bring its capital adequacy ratio to nine per cent from current levels of two per cent.

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