Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Aug 7: Marching steadily towards its target of Rs 1000 crore profit by the end of this fiscal, J&K Bank today posted net profit of Rs 246 crore for the quarter ended June 2012 which rose by 35% year-on-year from Rs.182 crore in corresponding quarter of FY11-12.
Commenting on the results Mushtaq Ahmad, Chairman and CEO said, “The Bank’s profit and income growth amply proved our consistent performance.” Amid conditions where lending strategies have become a crucial aspect of banking business, we have increased our advances and improved yields on the same. All key ratios are showing an upward trend too.
“With expansion of branch network, we are hoping to keep the growth momentum up.We are conducting a recruitment drive to keep pace with the policy in terms of human resource as well”, he added.
On exploring opportunities in local economies to garner business and at the same time playing a crucial role as the only developmental bank of the State, the chairman stated that the bank continued to provide every needed financial support to all sectors of the State economy with right kind of product-mix.
He said, “To empower J&K farming community our Bank is pro-actively reaching out to the agricultural belts of the State to popularize ‘Kissan Credit Card Scheme’. The bank has issued 43472 Kisan Credit Card to the farmers involving an amount of Rs.225.46 crores in the last couple of months. Bank has already adopted interest subvention scheme of Govt. of India and is providing crop loans to farmers for production limit upto maximum of Rs.3.00 lacs per borrower @7% p.a. Bank is adopting villages for providing total credit solution to the credit requirements under agricultural & allied activities and other non-agri activities.”
He said that J&K Bank is driving the State’s horticultural economy in the form of financial assistance and other support structures to the growers. In this direction, J&K Bank’s Apple Project endeavours to provide comprehensive financial assistance to enhance apple production.
“We envisaged to cover the whole of Kashmir under the project within project implementation period of five years. The project has been initially launched in Shopian and Baramulla districts of Kashmir. During the current crop season the bank envisaged to tap 12150 apple growers in the targeted districts with loan outflow of Rs.324.00 crores. Due to its success the bank has extended its implementation in district Kulgam and Pulwama besides working for complete coverage of the targeted districts of Baramulla and Shopian. The bank has envisaged to tap further 50,000 apple growers in the next crop season covering four districts with further loan outflow of Rs.700 crores,” said the chairman.
Regarding Tourism, the Chairman said the Bank has extended credit facilities to the hospitality, industry and other allied sectors of the State. It recently financed two 5-star hotels, one each at Srinagar and Gulmarg, and considerably increased credit exposure in this sector.
“J&K Bank has created multiple products to boost credit flow into the tourism sector like scheme for guest houses, scheme for travel and tourist taxi operators, to provide hassle-free credit for the conversion of residential properties into tourist guest houses, upgrade tourist transport services and generate more employment,” he said.
Meanwhile, first quarter results revealed that the advances of the bank increased by 25.84% and stood at Rs 33,225.27 crore; as compared to Rs 26,403.47 for the corresponding quarter FY12. Total Deposits grew by 23.30% to stand at Rs 53,117.10 as against Rs 43,077.93 crore for Q1 of last FY 2011.
Gross NPA ratio was declined to 1.60% from 1.97% for Q1 of FY 2011-12, while as the net NPAs stood at Rs 48.16 crore as against Rs 58.35 crore in the corresponding quarter.
The Bank continued to increase its branch network across India and had a network of 611 branches by the end of first quarter of FY 2012-13. Within the quarter, the Bank added 8 Business Units and planned to add about 100 more Business Units by the end of this financial year.
During the quarter, the Bank added 20 ATMs taking the total ATM number to 528 as on June 30, 2012. Recently, the Bank opened first ATM in Drass, the world’s 2nd coldest place. The Bank is also opening 10 more ATMs in areas like Drass in the State.
The revised financial results were approved by the board of directors of the bank in a meeting held here today.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel