Canara Bank eyes 20 pc profit growth

NEW DELHI: Canara Bank is set to achieve a 16 per growth in its business and 20 per growth in operating profit during the current financial year. This was indicated by the bank''s chairman and managing director, R V Shastri, on Friday.
Speaking to the media after the launch of Internet banking and mobile banking facility, Shastri said, the bank would continue its focus on volumes.As of March, 31, 03, the bank achieved a business of Rs 1,12,000 crore and the same is expected to touch around Rs 1,31,000 crore by March, 31, 2004.
Though margins are under pressure for the industry on the whole, the bank hopes to take care of the falling margins through volume growth. Around 25 per cent of the growth in business is expected to come from retail banking and the bank expects to build a home loan portfolio of around Rs 2200 crore by the end of current year.
Shastri said the technology initiatives such as internet banking would help the bank to expand its customer base which has touched 2.5 crore. "We hope to add 25 lakh fresh customers (10 per cent) every year" he added. The new facility is being offered in six cities in the first phase covering 300 cities and would be extended to other cities at a later stage.
Canara also hopes to achieve complete computerisation of its branches (around 2500 branches) by September 2004. Though most private banks have already been offering Internet banking, it is yet to catch up with the public sector banks.
Canara Bank too has been talking about its Internet banking for quite some time and had initially planned to launch it by April this year but the delay according to Shastri, was mainly because of the time taken to make it fool-proof.