Canara Bank focussing on bringing down NPA

PTI : BL : June 25,2013

Canara Bank is taking various measures, including loan restructuring, to bring down its mounting non-performing assets (NPA), a top bank official said today.

As against the overall 2.5 per cent NPA, education loan sector had an NPA of nine per cent, followed by agriculture six to seven per cent and MSME sector five per cent pan India, bank Chairman and Managing Director, R K Dubey said here.

Stating that education sector’s NPA stood at about Rs 4,200 crore, he said the bank had two months ago launched a campaign in which the officials would meet the students and their parents, enquire about their problems and suggest restructuring of their loans.

Accordingly, the customers would be given more time from seven year to nine years to repay the loan.

The campaign has evoked tremendous response and the bank was able to recover Rs 53 crore during the period, Dubey said.

Dubey, here to review the performance of branches in Coimbatore circle, said the bank would take its total branches to 5,000 from the present 3,721, in another two years by setting up new ones in the North East, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand among other states, with focus on rural and semi-urban areas.

He said the bank would extend its e-Lobby product, which has been a success in Bengaluru and Delhi, to important cities, including Coimbatore.

The e-Lobby has facilities like ATM, cash and cheque deposits, passbook printing and also internet banking under one roof, Dubey said.

Earlier Dubey donated a bus to Sankara Eye Foundation on behalf of the bank and also disbursed loans worth Rs 127 crore to 4,300 beneficiaries including weavers, farmers, SHGs SMEs and Transgenders.

(This article was published on June 25, 2013)