UCO Bank crosses Rs 100,000 crore business target before March

Kolkata, Jan 29 (UNI) UCO Bank became the first among the three city-based public sector Banks to reach the business target of Rs 100,000 crore, thereby positioning itself as one of the most growth -oriented Banks in the country.

Declaring the financial results of the Bank from April to December period of the current fiscal, UCO Bank Chairman and Managing Director V Sridar here today said on the basis of the current performance the Bank had revised its annual business target to Rs 1,11,000 crore as on March 31,2007.

He said as the Bank had reached the important milestone within three years of touching the Rs 50,000 crore mark, it would not be a difficult task to do the Rs 150,000 crore worth of business within the next one year.

Besides the UCO Bank, two other Banks having their headquarters here are Allahabad Bank and United Bank of India both of whom had done business to the tune of Rs 85,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore respectively during the first nine months of the current fiscal.

Referring to the profitability margin of the Bank till December 31, Mr Sridar said compared to the corresponding period of the previous year the net profitability margin of the Bank had recorded a healthy 11.66 per cent growth to Rs 285 crore.

Similarly in terms of operating profit the growth was to the tune of 19.98 per cent to Rs 713 crore from Rs 594 crore, earned in December 2005.

The total deposit and advance from April to December last year also recorded impressive growth of 8.14 per cent and 21.28 per cent respectively to Rs 58,232 crore and Rs 42,935 crore.

Elaborating his future intitiatives, the UCO Bank Chairman said following the RBI and the China Banking Regulatory Commission's clearances recently, their first overseas representative office would be opened in Guangzhou in China by next month.

At present UCO Bank had two full fledged branches in Singapore and Hong Kong and both of them were doing quite well and making substantial profit, he said.

He said as part of the Bank's diversified business strategy they had planned to give more thrust on the recovery of NPA and reduced its margin drastically.

" Our efforts have already started bearing fruits, " the CMD said adding till december 31 the gross NPA margin was reduced to 3.23 from 4.85 per cent a year ago and that of the net NPA to 2.15 per cent from over 3.5 per cent during the previous year.

A total amount of Rs 654 crore had so far been recovered in this connection, Mr Sridar informed.

" We are also planning to open about 50 more branches during the entire fiscal and bring 84 branches under the CBS during the same period, " he said.

Denying that the Bank had any plan to broadbase its capital to further improve the capital adequacy ratio from 12.65 per cent to over 13 per cent by March this year, Mr Sridar said in fact the Bank had already submitted a capital restructuring plan to the Union government earlier this year.

" If our proposal is cleared by the Union Finance Ministry and the RBI by March, we might opt for a follow on Public Issue during Spetember-October period, " the UCO Bank CMD said adding, however, at present there was not much head room for them to infuse capital as the government stake in the Bank had already been diluted by over 74 per cent.

UNI