The Hindu Business Line : Canara Bank is Basel-II ready

"We made an assessment of our capital and after taking care of credit, marketand operational risks, we still have a CAR of nine per cent. As it is, we are Basel-II ready," he said, and pointed out that the bank had enough room for raising capital, if need be.

"Since we are 73 per cent-owned by the Government (and the rest with the public), we still have 22 percentage points to offer in the follow-up issue. The bank also has Rs 1,200 crore investment fluctuation reserve," he said.

Mr Rao was here to deliver the keynote address at the International Conference on `Business and Finance-2005', organised by the ICFAI University.

On its expansion globally, he said the bank had one branch each in London and Russia (a joint venture). "We have a finance company in Hong Kong. We have applied with the monetary authority for permission to convert that into a bank. We hope that it will happen in the first quarter of next year. We also have a representative office in China and applied for permission to open a branch. Shortly we will be opening a representative office in the UAE," he said.

Technology-focused: The bank focussed on technology in a very big way. "We are going to implement core banking project in over 1,000 branches by mid 2006.

IBM is providing the solution that would enable the bank to offer modern services to all of our customers," he said.

No. 1 on study loans: On the educational loan front, he said the bank stood first among the nationalised banks. Stating that recovery rate had significantly gone up, he said recoveries were related to the employment rate. Now that the economy was doing good and people were getting good employment opportunities, he said the recoveries would be improved further.

The bank made proactive measures to step up educational loans. "We run campaigns in cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad," he said.

The total educational portfolio of the bank stood at Rs 950 crore, including Rs 150 crore given this year.

The bank had also decided to increase stress on human resources. "Last year, we trained nearly 24,000, half of our workforce, focussing on skill sets and knowledge management," he said.