India's largest commercial bank State Bank of India will focus on four areas, including retail banking, to achieve 16 per cent growth during the current financial year.
"We are looking at a 16.50 per cent growth in advances and 15 per cent in deposits in 2004-05. For this, we will focus on retail banking, project uptech, infrastructure and international trade," SBI Chairman and Managing Director A K Purwar said.
He said SBI was aggressively identifying areas which had linkages between input and output to achieve the target. While making clear that the bank was not averse to making substantial investment in agriculture, SMEs and personal banking in retail division, the CMD said it would continue to aggressively increase portfolios in all these areas.
Purwar said in project uptech, the bank was planning increased penetration in auto components, rice mills, brassware, agro pumpsets and fresh water aqua.
"We are planning to set up a separate strategic business unit for focussed attention on infrastructure projects."
This apart, the bank would focus on other core sectors for development of economy like telecom, petroleum, oil, gas, paper and paperboards and hotels for increasing business. Purwar said SBI expects its international business to grow significantly during the current fiscal.
"We are expecting our profit from international business to double from $40 million recorded in 2003-04."