State Bank Of Hyderabad Net Up 17.53% At Rs 150 Crore

State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) has posted a 17.53 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 150.22 crore for the year ended March 31, 2001, against Rs 127.81 crore in the previous year. Total income rose by 13.32 per cent to Rs 1,982 crore (Rs 1,748.93 crore).

Operating profit went up by 8.98 per cent to Rs 448 crore (Rs 411 crore) owing to the Rs 45.9 crore voluntary retirement scheme expenditure charged to the profit and loss account.

"Our gross profit would have been higher at Rs 494 crore and net profit would have been Rs 196 crore, had there been no VRS charges," said K S V Krishnama Chari, managing director of the bank.

Around 10.4 per cent of the bank's total staff, including 663 officers were relieved under the VRS last year. Aggregate deposits of the bank grew by 18.52 per cent and stood at Rs 14,842 crore (Rs 12,527 crore). Advances reached Rs 7,091 crore from Rs 6,087 crore.

However, the credit deposit ratio has marginally dropped to 47.78 per cent from 48.59 per cent. Total disbursements under agriculture at Rs 655 crore reflected an increase of 28.05 per cent against the Reserve Bank of India-stipulated 25 per cent.

While gross non-performing assets (NPAs) have gone up from Rs 732 crore to Rs 883 crore, net NPAs, in percentage terms, have jumped to 7.82 per cent from 7.3 per cent. In rupee terms, the net NPAs have jumped to Rs 555 crore (Rs 444 crore).

"We have attained a business turnover of Rs 21,933 crore for the last fiscal and aiming at a Rs 25,000 crore turnover for the current financial year, Krishnama Chari said. With the issue of bonds worth Rs 120 crore under the tier-II capital, SBH's capital adequacy ratio has improved to 12.28 per cent from 10.86 per cent.

Return on total assets has improved marginally by 0.03 percentage points to 0.9 per cent. At the same time, return on equity has narrowed down by 1.17 per cent to 21.77 per cent.

"The response for the one-time settlement scheme is good in our case. By March, we have recovered Rs 58 crore from around 25,916 borrowers and by May, the collections have reached Rs 63 crore, Krishnama Chari said.

The bank has so far invested around Rs 45 crore on introducing advanced technologies such as automated teller machines (ATMs), and branch automation. It has also introduced Internet banking recently. For the current year, the bank allocated Rs 16 crore to install 20 more ATMs and computerise 138 more branches.