SBI upbeat on foreign growth, to scale up Singapore ops

The country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), has chalked out strategies to grow aggressively in overseas markets, especially Singapore, in this fiscal, a top SBI official said. This would help the Indian banking behemoth to move a step closer to consolidate its position in the global financial services industry.

SBI is in advanced stages of setting up offices in the Middle East, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Hong Kong, and would mainly focus on corporate banking and project financing in these locations, the official said.

“We have plans to move to all geographies across the globe, where Indian corporates have operations. The bank would act as a facilitator in all areas for these entities to grow their business,” the official said.

In Singapore, where it currently have six branches and five ATMs, SBI would increase its presence to at least 16 locations by June, the official said. In Saudi Arabia, SBI has already secured approval for setting up its first branch at Jeddah, which is likely to be operational by the fiscal-end. State Bank, which has a balance sheet size of Rs 9.77 lakh crore as at end-June 2009, is also actively looking at expanding operations in South Africa.