Allahabad Bank to open more branches

Ahmedabad, Feb 2 (PTI) Allahabad Bank plans toincrease its presence in South India and set up four overseasbranches in the next few years, a top official of the publicsector lender said today.

"Our target is to achieve Rs 2.2 lakh-crore mark intotal business by the end of March. In the next three years,we want to take this figure to over Rs 4 lakh-crore,"Executive Director D Sarkar told reporters here.

"We plan to increase our presence in Gujarat,Maharashtra and also South India. For this we will have toapply some aggressive strategies," he said.

"Besides, ground work is in progress to open overseasbranches in Singapore, Shanghai, Dhaka and Kowloon (HongKong). We already have a branch in Hong Kong," Sarkar said.

The state-run lender, with has a gross NPA of 1.77 percent, plans to increase its branch strength to 2,425 from2,402 by March, he said.

It plans to open nine new branches in Gujarat bySeptember. The bank has 48 branches in the state, whichgenerate total business of Rs 6,719.69 crore with deposits ofRs 2631.03 crore and advances of Rs 4088.66 crore, he said.

The bank also plans to increase the number of ATMs inGujarat to 500 by end of 2012, Sarkar added.