BoI expects advances to grow 23% in Hyd zone

The Hyderabad zone of the Bank of India (BoI) expects advances to grow by 23.43 per cent to Rs 908 crore during 2004-05, with focus on retail credit.

Addressing a press conference, the new zonal manager of the bank, Nagesh Pydah, said: "The bank expects the business mix (advances and deposits) to increase 22 per cent to Rs 1,827 crore during the current financial year from Rs 1,498 crore," adding, "the target is to increase the deposits by 22.69 per cent and percentage share of low cost deposits to 43.18 per cent during the current fiscal."

"We expect the operating profit to increase from Rs 23.7 crore to Rs 45.23 crore during the current financial year," he said.

Pydah said that the priority sector advances would be increased by 21.47 per cent with major thrust on small scale industries and agricultural advances this year.

While the agricultural advances in the zone stood at Rs 96 crore in the total priority sector advances of Rs 252 crore, the SSI advances stood at Rs 51 crore.

Bank of India, which operates in two zones in the state -- the Hyderabad zone and the Visakhapatnam zone -- has a total of 80 branches.

In the Hyderabad zone, the bank has 35 branches and 17 ATMs. "We have got the permission from the Reserve Bank of India to open a branch at Film Nagar and we will open the branch during this financial year," Pydah said.

The bank expects to add 40,000 savings bank accounts and 3,000 current accounts during the current financial year.