Allahabad Bank chairperson cum managing director Shubhlakshmi Panse, who was here to donate Rs five crore to the Chief Minister's Disaster Relief Fund in Dehradun, has categorically instructed to increase credit deposit ratio (CDR), which is currently mere 37 per cent. However, she also said that most of the industries, which are operational in the State, having their head office in Mumbai or Delhi; so the bank's CDR is low. "If we add the industry, who have either taken loan from Delhi or Mumbai for their expansion, then it would be more than 50 per cent. Even the State level Banking committee (SlBC) CDR is not more than 50 per cent."
Talking about disaster affected people including business community, who had taken loan from bank to do business during the yatra season, Panse said that RBI has already given direction to the banks to restructure the existing loan of the customers of disaster-affected areas; so Allahabad Bank is working on it.
She said, "Allahabad bank is going to complete 150th years on April 24, 2014; so we are giving more emphasis on CDR. As far as Uttarakhand is concerned, we have 32 branches in the State. We are going to add three new branches, one each in Gopeshwar, Champawat and Bageshwar. At present in Dehradun, we have 13 ATMs including 10 are attached with branches and now we are going to open 22 new ATM in the State." She further said that in first quarter of ongoing financial year we did business of Rs 309118 crore including Rs 180177 crore deposit and Rs 128941 crore credit. "We made operational profit of Rs 1022 crore and liquidity availability ratio was 11.07 percent while as per the bank norms it should be at least nine percent. Now bank has fixed its business target of 20 percent," she said.
Panse said that bank is giving more emphasis on (Current and saving account) and "to increase the cash flow, the bank would organise a special campaign so that we would collect our 35 per cent cash through this only and we would lesser our dependent on high cost cash. By doing this, we would be able to improve our net interest margin."
"As far as Dehradun division is concerned, there is tremendous scope. Here agriculture and agriculture based activity in small and medium industry, tourism, wholesale and retail business. Besides it real estate/housing construction and educational activity is moving northward so Allahabad bank is making all effort to cope up with the situation. In nutshell bank would do everything to make their contribution in state's overall development. Bank has refurbished their current credit card scheme on Akshya krishi-kissan card scheme so that farmer can avail all kind of funds requirement with this scheme."