Agriculture focus of banking model
CHENNAI: Indian Bank will follow a different kind of banking model in the resettlement of Sri Lankan Tamils in its three branches of Jaffna, Batticaloa and Humbatota, with the focus being on comprehensive area development.
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Indian Bank chairman and managing director T M Bhasin said the new branches in Sri Lanka would not be the usual brick and mortar branch. Instead, it would focus on agriculture and small and medium enterprises, besides building 50,000 houses for displaced Tamils in the region, he revealed.
While the first branch will start operating in Jaffna from January 15-20, the other two will open at Batticaloa and Humbantota soon.
Bhasin also assured people not to press the panic button over the housing finance racket and said there was no systemic failure nor any risk to banking system. It was isolated and individual acts of misdemeanour by a handful of people in some other banks, he added.
His statement comes in the wake of the CBI uncovering a multi-crore rupees corporate housing loan racket involving several public sector lenders, including LIC and Bank of India.
Reiterating that Indian Bank has no such problem, he said the bank’s punitive and vigilance system was strong and effective.
Bhasin said the online borrowal account tracking system was useful and successful in stemming the rot of non-performing assets, which account for `550 crore as against `382 crore during the same period last year.