Since the new board took over the charge of management of the Urban Cooperative Bank limited, Rourkela (UCBlR), a ray of hope has emerged among the employees as well as the customers and shareholders of the bank. Meanwhile, the confidence on the bank has risen with it earning profit and its NPA slashing since 2015-16 financial year. In the present fiscal, the management has taken many steps to recover the loan amounts which were bad debt for years together.
It is only possible due to the efforts and vision of board president Rajesh Mohapatra, says UCBlR employees’ association president Prasant Kumar Jena. Welcoming the commendable efforts of Mohapatra for loan recovery, Jena said the employees are always ready to extend their cooperation and work as per the guidance of Mohapatra for the interest of the bank. Jena said due to the efforts and innovative steps of the management, the bank is not only making profit but also awarded in the district and State level. Jena said the brightest example of recovery of loan amount was from an industrialist Biswa Ranjan Pattnaik which was an NPA since last many years. Even though many previous boards were unable to recover the amount, the present board succeeded and finally the bank recovered Rs 90 lakh.
Expressing gratitude to the board and especially to Mohapatra, for recovering this huge amount, Jena said this will encourage the employees to work aggressively for loan recovery from other defaulters.
Besides this many more NPA loan accounts were settled down so far in this current fiscal. If this trend continues then the profit margin will go up to make the bank self sufficient and the shareholders will be given good margin of dividends in coming years. Jena also assured all sorts of cooperation from the employees to the board of management in coming days.
It may be noted here that till 2014-15 fiscal, the bank was making loss and the NPA was going up. That is why the employees as well as investors were apprehensive on the future of the bank. But in 2015-16, the bank was able to reduce gross NPA rate by 2.54 per cent and the gross NPA as on March 31, 2016 was 27.40 per cent in comparison to 29.93 per cent as on March 31, 2015.