Union Bank of India has set a total business target of Rs 1,60,000 crore (Rs 1.6 trillion) for the current fiscal and has identified retail, SMEs, agriculture and corporates as growth areas for the year.
It is also planning to come out with fixed deposit scheme with maturity of five years and above, no-frills account and credit cards.
Addressing a press conference, M V Nair, chairman and managing director, Union Bank of India, said the bank would invest about Rs 170 crore (Rs 1.7 billion) for expansion of ATMs, implementation of core banking solution in more branches and for other technology initiatives.
The bank has 2,083 branches and 483 ATMs across the country. It is planning to add 100 branches and 517 ATMs during the year.
About 780 branches have been brought under its core banking solution platform Finacle and plans to implement the network in 420 more branches by the end of this fiscal.
Nair said the bank eyes Rs 90,000 crore (Rs 900 billion) of deposits and Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) of advances this fiscal. He said the bank's total business crossed Rs 1,25,000 crore (Rs 1.25 trillion) as of March 31, 2006. Of this, deposits stood at about Rs 74,200 crore (Rs 742 billion) and advances at Rs 54,500 crore (Rs 545 billion).
Elaborating on the growth areas, the bank proposes to increase the number of retail marts to 100 by the end of this fiscal from the present 32.
These retail marts -- branches within branches -- would offer all loans under one shop with a specialised team of people. At present, housing loans account for about 70 per cent of the bank's retail portfolio of Rs 9,200 crore (Rs 92 billion).
Nair said the bank would continue the schemes, initiated on the agricultural front during last year, this fiscal too. It had set up 101 village knowledge centres in rural areas to disseminate information to farmers. It will add 100 more such centres during this year across the country.
The bank has identified 50 SME clusters to provide financial assistance to the units in clusters and has also packaged two products for SMES. It is also in discussion with Sidbi and Smera for rating the units.
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