Indian Overseas Bank will shortly open 'representative offices' in UAE, Malaysia, China and Canada, subject to the approval of the board and the Reserve Bank of India, S C Gupta, managing director, IOB, said on Saturday.
IOB already has branches in Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Colombo, besides a 'limited purpose' branch in Singapore and the forex turnover for the year 2003-04 was at Rs 21,967 crore (Rs 219.67 billion), a 19 per cent increase over the previous year, Gupta said at a press conference in Chennai.
Pointing out that IOB had projected a 17 per cent growth for 2004-05 through its 38 regional offices, Gupta said the bank was concentrating on bringing down the NPA level from 2.85 per cent to below 1.5 per cent.
Giving details about IOB's performance for the year ended March 2004, Gupta said the operating profit had gone up to Rs 1325.20 crore (Rs 13.25 billion) from Rs 794.13 crore (Rs 7.94 billion) the previous year, a jump of 67 per cent. The net profit rose to Rs 512.76 crore (Rs 5.13 billion) from Rs 416.10 crore (Rs 4.16 billion).