Dena Bank to evaluate bad debts

Chennai, Oct 10 (UNI) The Public Sector Dena Bank has appointed Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) to evaluate the market value of its bad debts worth Rs 600 crore, Bank CMD P L Gairola said today.

Talking to reporters here, he said once the evaluation was over, which was expected to be completed in one month's time, the bad debts would be sold to Asset Reconstruction companies.

"The PWC will identify and evaluate only certain assets which are in the form of bad debts or bad loans", he added.

Mr Gairola said to keep pace with the changing technological development, Dena Bank would introduce Core Banking Solutions (CBS) in its 850 branches in the next 30 months at a total cost of Rs 300 crore.

As a pilot project it would be introduced in ten branches in select cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad and New Delhi, by the end of this fiscal.

The CBS would be completely outsourced and the Bank had tied up with hardware major Wipro for implementing the CBS. Wipro, in turn had worked out an arrangement with Infosys for supply of software for the CBS, which also included networking of bank's branches.

To a question, Mr Gairola said 30 new branches would be started by the end of March 2007 of which one would be in Puducherry, to take its overall branch strength to 1152.

Announcing that the bank's overall business was expected to grow by 18 to 20 per cent this fiscal to touch a business volume of Rs 50,000 crore, he said the bank's deposits would grow by 15 per cent to Rs 31,000 crore and the advances by 25 per cent to Rs 19,000 crore.

Efforts were also being made to reduce the Gross NPA level to less than four per cent and the net NPA to about 1.5 per cent from the present 6.44 per cent and 3.04 per cent respectively by the end of the current fiscal through aggressive recovery mode and robust credit monitoring system.

The nearly 70-year-old Bank had drawn up a 'Dena Vision-2010' with the mission of achieving Rs 100,000 crore business by 2010.

UNI GV JJ 1805