Vijaya Bank posts profit for Q2

Bangalore, Oct 23(UNI) Public sector Vijaya Bank has posted a net profit of Rs 79.88 crore at the end of the second quarter (Q2) largely due to a robust growth of 37.20 per cent in net interest income, its Chairman and Managing Director Albert Tauro said today.

Speaking to newspersons here, after announcing the Bank's financial performance for the half-year ended on September 30 this year, Mr Tauro said the bank has wiped out the net loss of Rs 76.64 crore incurred in the first quarter.

He said a 29.50 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth has helped the bank to reach a business volume of Rs 89,328 crore at the end of Q2 of this fiscal, while deposits moved up by 24.77 per cent to reach Rs 52,616 crore, and advances touched a robust 36.93 per cent growth to move up to Rs 36,712 crore.

Mr Tauro said due to the robust growth in both deposits and advances, the credit deposit ratio was improved to 69.77 per cent as against the previous figure of 63.58 per cent a year ago.

To tide over the liquidity constraints and mobilise core term deposits, the bank had introduced two special fixed tenure deposit schemes during the quarter, he added.

He said during the quarter, the lending in agirculture witnessed a growth of 30 per cent, followed by education loan by 43 per cent and financial assistance to weaker section to 29 per cent.

He said the operating profit for the quarter touched Rs 150.50 crore compared to Rs 144.55 crore for the corresponding period.

He said the growth in Bank's gross advances during the first half of the financial year was broad based and heldped by various rebalancing initiatives.

Bank's priority sector advances recorded a 24.32 per cent YoY growth to reach Rs 12,829 crore at the end of September 2008. The agriculture sector advances posted 39.06 per cent growth to reach Rs 4,194 crore, he added.

Expressing satisfaction on the perfromance of the bank for the Q2, Mr Tauro said bank would target more business from Business and Commercial borrowings than from reduction in expenditure, improve in cash-deposit ratio and reducing Non Performing Assets (NPA).

The bank was also planned to set up a online trading portal to provide stock trading facility to its customers and bring all the branches under CBS by March 2009 and capture 100 per cent business coverage on CBS platform.

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