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Mr M.S. Sundara Rajan

K.R. Srivats

New Delhi, Dec 31

Indian Bank has no immediate plans to offload in the market its surplus SLR bonds worth Rs 4,300 crore, its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr M.S. Sundara Rajan, has said.

The bank may use this surplus to borrow cheaper funds from the Reserve Bank of India rather than selling the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) status bonds in the market.

After the RBI gave ‘SLR status’ to recapitalisation bonds, Indian Bank’s SLR investments moved up to about 34 per cent of deposits as against the required level of 25 per cent. “I may not do it,” Mr Sundara Rajan told Business Line here, when asked whether the bank plans to offload its surplus SLR bonds in the market. He also highlighted that borrowing from the RBI would be a cheaper option that the bank may pursue in the coming days. Indian Bank is also shedding its high cost deposits and so far about Rs 1,900 crore of high cost deposits have been repaid on maturity during the current financial year, Mr Sundara Rajan said.

The Indian Bank CMD was in the Capital to launch the bank’s ‘Microsate’ branch in the Capital. Stating that micro-credit was an important focus area for the bank, Mr Sundara Rajan said that he was looking to build the micro-credit book to Rs 800 crore by the end of the current fiscal as against the present level of about Rs 700 crore.

Besides the latest micro-credit branch at Delhi, which is the ninth for the bank, he said that plans are afoot to open three more similar exclusive branches before the end of the current financial year. These branches will come up at Pune, Bhubaneshwar and Bangalore.

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