CorpBank may raise tier II capital

The Mangalore-based public sector bank, Corporation Bank, expects credit offtake to rise some 28 per cent this year. This is on top of the 35 per cent growth achieved last year.

"This has resulted in a fall in the bank's capital adequacy ratio and gives us an opportunity to increase our Tier-II capital," bank's chairman and managing director V K Chopra said.

Among individual sectors, the bank has seen excellent growth in the small and medium enterprises segment and the infrastructure sector. It is targetting a business of Rs 55,000 crore this fiscal, including Rs 23,000 crore of advances and Rs 32,000 crore of deposits.

Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, Chopra said that 9 per cent of the business comes from the infrastructure sector, 30 per cent from retail, 12 per cent SMEs and 11 per cent from the agriculture sector, while the balance is from the corporate sector.

The bank, however, has not been able to meet the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norm of 18 per cent of the total advances to the priority sector.

"We are lagging behind in this area, but over the last couple of years we have been increasing our exposure," he said.

The bank, which opened four new fully-automated branches in the city on Thursday, aims to open 35 more branches over the next three months and add 125 ATMs all over the country.

The bank, which is celebrating its centenary this year, has the second largest ATM net-work among public sector banks, next only to State Bank of India.

The bank has already drawn up plans to make available 1,825 service outlets across the country to the public by the end of current fiscal.

All the branches of the bank are computerised with 522 under the core banking solution covering about 83 per cent of the business of the bank, he said.

The bank's Bangalore zone has a total business of Rs 5,989 crore consisting of deposits of Rs 3,046 crore and advances of Rs 2,943 crore.

This constitutes about 12 per cent of the total business of the bank.