SBI likely to unwrap 24% growth in bottomline

The largest public sector commercial bank, State Bank of India (SBI) is likely to announce a 24 per cent growth in net profit for 2004-05 against less than 17 per cent in the previous fiscal.

The bank is expected to clock around Rs 4,600 crore of net profit for 2004-05 against Rs 3,681 crore achieved in 2003-04 backed by credit growth.

Sources close to development said that treasury profits for the bank was likely to see substantial decline that had put some pressure on the profit figures.

In 2003-04 the bank registered a Rs 9,400 crore. This year however the total circle profits would hover around Rs 7200 crore.

Sources also said profit from forex operations would hover around Rs 813 crore for the period ended March 31, 2005. This would a marginal decline of around two per cent against Rs 829 crore.

It was also learnt that Mumbai has emerged the highest growth center among the 14 circles of SBI which witnessed around Rs 1000 crore of profit which would be up 17 per cent against the previous year.

This was followed by New Delhi which was likely to clock a 18 per cent growth at Rs 870 crore. West Bengal and Sikkim along with the Union territory of Andaman & Nikobar islands, was likely to post a net profit of Rs 350 crore in 2004 -05 "" a 39 per cent rise over the previous fiscal's figure of Rs 254 crore.

SBI's Kerala was next at Rs 140 crore during 2004 -05 against Rs 118 crore in 2003-04.

Other circles of SBI which were learnt to have witnessed robust growth were the Chennai circle Rs 650 crore against Rs 505 crore, Patna circle at around Rs 500 crore against Rs 387 crore, north-east circle at Rs 280 crore vis-...-vis Rs 146 crore in 2003-04, and Bangalore at around Rs 350 crore. Last year this circle clocked a Rs 274 crore profit.

Other circles like Ahmedabad was likely to clock Rs 250 crore of profit, while Bhopal circle would be at Rs 450 crore, Bhubhaneswar circle Rs 220 crore, Chandigarh circle Rs 617 crore and the Lucknow circle Rs 657.1 crore.