Corporation Bank has undertaken a drive to contain slippages and focus on recovery in order to reduce its non performing assets.

“From February 10 we have incentivized going for recovery, with the option to either upgrade or fully recover the loan,” SR Bansal, Chairman and Managing Director, Corporation Bank said. By March, he hoped to bring down the gross NPAs, that stood at 3.08 per cent for the quarter-ended December 31.

To improve credit quality, the bank was moving away from targeting bulk deposits to the branches for business, Bansal told Business Line . “We want growth at a grassroots level, instead of growing from the head office,” he said, adding that the focus will be on retail, agriculture and MSMEs where the yield was higher and the delinquency lower. During the current year, the three sectors had seen over 30 per cent growth on a year-on-year basis, he said. In addition to expanding its network to over 2,000 branches by the end of fiscal 2014 , Bansal said the bank was working on improving its CASA ratio from 17 per cent at present to 25 per cent by March 2015.

Corporation Bank opened an exclusive SME loan Centre in Pune on Monday. This is its seventh such centre in the country, with plans to set up 15 more across the country by the end of the fiscal. The next in Ludhiana is due to open later this month.

 “There is a lot of scope for loans for MSMEs, as today, institutional and non-institutional credit is available to less than 6 per cent of them,” Bansal said.

To meet the financial requirements of micro enterprises (both in the manufacturing as well as the services sector), Corporation Bank has launched, “Corp Micro Plus” a special campaign with a rate of interest pegged at the Base Rate (presently 10.25 per cent) and no processing charges till March 31.

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