PNB to expand its overseas operation

Bhubaneswar, Aug 20 (UNI) With a total business of Rs 2.38 lakh crore as on June 2007, the Punjab National Bank (PNB) is contemplating moving the overseas market for business expansion.

PNB Chairman Cum Managing Director K C Chakrabarty said the Bank would upgrade its offices at Shanghi in China and Dubai to branch category to make the company more competitive in the global market.

Mr Chakrabarty, however, refused to give details of the expansion programmes saying that its subsidiaries in the UK and Canada have got license for operation in Hongkong. He also ruled out any immediate consolidation and merger of the Indian banks but hoped that this might take place some time in 2010-11 and said PNB was strengthening its position in home and abroad.

He told news a news conference that though the bank has raised Rs 500 crore Tier II capital in August yet it has a space of raising Rs 4000 debt from the market to meet its fund requirements.

Mr Chakrabarty, who inaugurated the bank's zonal office here today, said it would focus more on disbursement of loans in agriculture and education sectors in Orissa. The bank, he said, was planning to set up the Farmers Training Centre in Ganjam and had approached Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to provide land for the purpose.

He said the bank had tied up with five educational institutions and assured that all needy students in these institutions would be provided educational loans.

Orissa, Mr Chakrabarty said, was perhaps the only state in the country where all its 56 branches in the state had been covered under Core Banking Solution (CBS) system. The bank, he said, would set up ten more branches and 8 ATM centres during the next year.

UNI