UCO Bank urges RBI clearing house outsourcing

Jalandhar, Aug 19: UCO Bank Executive Director S A Bhat today advocated the outsourcing of the RBI Clearing House operations but ruled out possibility of privatisation of UCO Bank.

Talking to reporters here, Mr Bhat said that the clearing house operational time was required to be shortened in the interest of bank clients and if this could not be done by internal resources of the RBI then there would be no harm in opting for outsourcing for the task.

He said that the RBI had already carried a study to examine all aspects in this regard and this study should be made public so that the bank industry could ponder over the issue.

Expressing satisfaction over the functioning of UCO Bank, Mr Bhat said that three to four years ago UCO Bank was considered to be one of the three weak banks of the country but we had worked hard to improve our position and the bank is no longer in the weak bank category.

He said that UCO Bank had earned net profit of Rs 197 crore during the last fiscal and had earned Rs 61 crore profit by the first quarter of the present fiscal.

He said that presently the bank had around 74 per cent government capital holding and there was no plan for privatisation of the bank.

However, in the process of consolidation of bank, merger or ''happy marriage'' with some other nationalised bank could not be ruled out.

Mr Bhat said that the consolidation was not the need of his bank but this was the requirement of the banking industry as a whole.

He said that this process of consolidation had already started and might take three to four years to conclude.

In its bid to counter the business challenges from private sector banks, UCO Bank had also launched Small Enterpreneurs and Retail Sale Force (SERSF) programme for prividing door step banking services to retail traders, small enterpreneurs and other customers.

Mr Bhat was in the town to launch the programme here today.

He said that this programme had presently been launched in 55 towns of the country, including Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh.

UNI