BIZ-TL-SYNDICATE BANK

Syndicate Bank hopes to

recover about Rs 1,500 crore from non-performing assets (NPAs)

over the next three to six months, chief executive officer and

managing director of the bank Mrutyunjay Mahapatra said here

Saturday.

The bank is adopting a combination of methods to

recover bad loans, he told reporters here.

It has formed a team of 1,500 people meant for taking

up the recovery process, in addition to special branches which

took up the task. The branches report directly to the

corporate office.

''As on September, our gross NPA was 12.9 per cent and

net NPA roughly 6.8 per cent,'' he said.

The NPAs in agriculture sector were also rising due

to expectations of loan waivers, he said.

''We are expecting that we will be profitable, kind

of a breakeven basis by the end of March and start getting

profits in June, Mahapatra said.

Currently, the bank has a total business of roughly

around Rs 4.80 lakh crore, comprising deposits of about Rs

2.50 lakh crore and advances of around Rs 2.15 lakh crore.

The bank is following a multi-pronged strategy of

managing the capital by taking assets which are highly rated

by external credit rating agencies, reducing NPAs and focusing

on retail and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) to

turn the bank into profitability, Mahapatra said.

The bank had reported losses earlier.

The net interest margin (NIM) is hovering in the

range of 2.25-2.5 per cent.

The bank is proposing to raise Rs 500 crore to Rs

600 crore through an employee share purchase scheme, he said.

''We are doing a employee share purchase scheme in

which we are proposing to raise Rs 500 crore to Rs 600 crore.

This will be one of the largest employee share purchase

schemes which is given in a public sector bank. We believe

that our bank has strong value, he said.

He also felt that a direct transfer of benefits in

farm sector like 'Rythu Bandhu' scheme in Telangana is better

as the loan waivers affected repayments.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)