Allahaband Bank eyeing to open branches in Asian cities

MUMBAI: To increase its international footprint, state-run Allahabad Bank is mulling over opening overseas branches in four Asian cities, a top official said.

"We have approached RBI for four new branches. One in Singapore, another in Dhaka, then Shanghai and Kowloon in Hong Kong," chairman and managing director of the bank J P Dua told PTI here.

However, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is yet to give a go-ahead on the proposal, Dua added.

Presently, the Kolkata-headquartered bank has its sole overseas branch operational in Hong Kong and also has a representative office in mainland China's Shenzen.

Dua also said that the bank is planning to augment its capital base in the last quarter of the current fiscal, but is yet to decide about the component to be raised and the route to adopt.

The bank is targeting a higher-than-industry credit growth of "24-25 per cent" for the fiscal, which demands capital augmentation, Dua said.

"We will see in the last quarter, right now we are comfortable. But as the growth takes place, capital is always needed," he said.

Dua said, apart from taking the normal routes for tier-I and tier-II augmentation, the bank may again go for a capital infusion from the Government which increases the promoter shareholding.

"May be tier-I, may be tier-II also and there is a third possibility (of) the government may also induct some funds like last year (when) they gave us Rs 670 crore," he said.

Presently, the total capital adequacy of the bank stands at 12.75 per cent, of which, the tier-I component stands at 8.4 per cent, he said.

Source: EconomicTimes