UCO Bank posts 25% credit growth

Beating recessionary pressures, Kolkata-based UCO Bank has registered a 25 per cent year-on-year credit growth in the October-December quarter so far.

As per latest calculations last Friday, the bank's credit growth stood at 25 per cent and the bank expected to post this growth in the third quarter of this fiscal ending December 31.

B M Mittal, executive director, UCO Bank, said that the bank was not excessively cautious in lending activities.It,however, had upscaled the decision making process for loans and would scrutinise the lending proposals more closely.

UCO Bank had registered a 16.13 per cent growth in advances at Rs 49,802 crore in the third quarter of the 2007-08 fiscal. The deposits were up by 24.33 per cent in Q308 at Rs72,402 crore. Mittal was bullish about deposits collection by banks in the current financial year."Deposits are our basic raw material. As people are not investing in the capital market or in bonds, they are likely to raise deposits with banks with the rising tendency to save.", he added.

Highlighting that the banking industry in India was not in a crisis, Mittal said that collective deposit generation in the industry is likely to rise by 1-2 per cent more than last year's growth rates.