Government-owned Central Bank of India (CBI) is looking to expand overseas and plans to seek licences for opening offices in Hong Kong, Bahrain and a few African countries.
“We want to establish our presence in Hong Kong and Bahrain. This will be either by way of a branch or through a subsidiary. We are in the process of applying to the RBI. We want to establish our presence in geographies where there are not too many Indian banks at present such as Africa, South and South East Asia,” said S Sridhar, chairman and managing director of CBI. He was speaking on the sidelines of a banking event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on Thursday. The bank is also looking to raise Tier-I capital worth about Rs 2,500 crore in order to meet its credit growth target of 25 per cent during the current financial year.
“We will have to raise about Rs 2,500 crore in order to support a credit growth of 25 per cent and to shore up our capital adequacy ratio. We are in the process of analysing the mode of raising funds. We are also in talks with the government,” said Sridhar.