Syndicate Bank Andhra zone achieves targets

Syndicate Bank's AP zone has well exceeded its set targets for the nine months period ended December 2003. The bank did a total business of Rs 5,528 crore with total deposits at Rs 3,097 crore (target Rs 3,080 crore) and advances at Rs 2,430 crore ( target Rs 2,256 crore).

Announcing this here at a press conference today, Michael Bastian, the chairman and managing director of Syndicate Bank, said that the target set for the zone for the current fiscal is Rs 6,000 crore.

According to B Ramakrishna Pai, deputy general manager of the bank, the zone could collect Rs 174 crore deposits in just last four days of last month to achieve Rs 500 crore business accretion target for the last quarter. Total business accretion for the nine months ended December 2003 stood at Rs 1,149 crore.

Talking about the bank's inorganic growth (acquisition) plans, its CMD said that the bank was awaiting the government-appointed standing committee recommendations on consolidation of the Indian banking industry.

"The Narasimham committee's second report on reforms in the banking industry classified State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India as international size banks and the rest of the 16 public sector banks as national ones. It suggested the finance ministry to have just nine national banks by merging the smaller banks with the larger ones," Bastian said. However, he did not like to comment on whether his bank is eyeing any particular smaller banks for acquisition.