Saraswat Bank record during FY 07-08

Mumbai, Jun 13 (UNI) Board of Directors of Saraswat Bank has announced its achievements during FY 2007-2008 in pursuance of Dr Adarkar Mission-II, which has a goal of reaching total business level of Rs 25,000 crore by 2011.

The Bank's senior director and former MP Eknath Thakur told reporters that ''Total business of the Bank, that is deposits plus advances, increased to Rs 18879.13 crore as on March 31, 2008, from Rs 15,295.40 crore as on March 31, 2007, resulting in an absolute growth of Rs 3,583.73 crore. In percentage terms, the growth was of the order of 23.43 per cent. The additional business is inclusive of Rs 450.58 crore added by virtue of merger of three urban cooperative banks.

The deposits of the Bank increased to Rs 11,430.82 crore as of March 31, 2008, from Rs 8,924.94 crore a year ago, showing a rise of Rs 2,505.88 crore. In percentage terms, the growth was of 28.08 per cent which is above the banking industry average of 26.03 per cent.

The advances of the Bank increased from Rs 6,370.46 crore in FY 2006-07 to Rs 7,448.31 crore in FY 2007-08, thereby recording a rise of Rs 1,077.85 crore, which in percentage term was 16.92 per cent.

The total number of deposit accounts of the Bank increased to 21,92,673 in 2008 from 18,11,635 in 2007, posting a total increase of 3,81,038 accounts. The number of loan accounts grew to 1,24,713 in 2008 from 1,16,687 last year. The three merged banks contributed 2,16,780 deposit accounts and 8,696 loan accounts.

The Bank's net profit after tax increased to Rs 202.26 crore as on March 31, 2008, from Rs 155.18 crore as on March 31, 2007, showing an increase of Rs 47.08 crore in a year, which is a rise of 30.34 per cent. In order to see the net profit of the Bank in proper perspective, owned funds, which is a sine-quo-non of financial soundness of a Bank, increased from Rs 1,024.41 crore in FY-2007 to Rs 1,088.28 crore in FY-2008. (It may be noted that during the current year, your Board has decided to place the entire accumulated losses of all the merged Banks on the General Reserves as stated in notes to Accounts.) Return on average assets, which is a testimony to insightful and efficient deployment of funds increased from 1.67 per cent in FY-2007 to 1.71 per cent as of March 31, 2008, which is considered to be very satisfactory and is well above the industry performance.

Capital to Risk Asset Ratio (CRAR), which is generally known as capital adequacy ratio, is impacted on account of the absorption of losses of the merged Banks with Saraswat Bank. CRAR stood at 10.85 per cent as of March 31, 2008, which is well above the 9 per cent prescribed by RBI. Under the Basel-I norms, currently applicable to Scheduled Commercial Banks, the Bank's CRAR has worked out to 10.54 per cent as of March 31, 2008, which is also well above nine per cent prescribed by RBI.

The Bank continued to retain its coveted position as Zero Net NPA Bank for the fourth consecutive year even after the merger of three Urban Co-operative Banks during the year under Report.

Net profit per employee increased from Rs 6.89 lakh to Rs. 7.14 lakh despite addition of 432 employees of three merged Urban Co-operative Banks to the staff of the Bank during the financial year, he added.

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