Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Union Bank of India Arun Tiwari, who was on a maiden visit to Odisha on Tuesday, announced that his bank would open 36 more branches in the State during 2014.
Speaking at a Press meet here, Tiwari said the total business of the bank in the State at the end of March, 2014 was
Rs 14,864.38 crore comprising deposits of Rs 7,819,03 crore and advances of Rs 7,043.35 crore with a credit-deposit ratio of 90.11 per cent.
The bank marked improvement in the priority sector, agriculture and MSME advances during 2013-14 having growth of 25.17%, 28.73 % and 31.54%, respectively over 2012-2013.
The gross NPA has been reduced to Rs 96.71 crore as on March, 2014 from the previous year’s Rs 110.4 crore while the retail lending grew by 17.27% over March, 2013 with 0/s level of Rs 275 crore as in March, 2014.
He said the Union Bank, which is the fifth largest bank in the country, is positioning itself among the youth and next generation customers by providing tech-savvy services like mobile banking, internet banking and talking ATMS called Sampoorna ATMs.
The bank, which started operations in Odisha in 1966 at Rourkela, has presently 104 branches and 138 ATMs in the State. It has 3,385 branches and 6,600 ATMs in the country and three overseas branches in Hong Kong, Dubai and Belgium. It has a vision of becoming a bank of first choice in chosen areas, he said. Among others, the bank’s Bhubaneswar region head Srivastava and other senior officials were present.