After just having a growth of over 2 per cent in net interest income, Ashok Chandra, MD & CEO of Punjab National Bank, is confident of achieving a 7 per cent growth for FY27. Talking to businessline, he said deposit growing lower than credit is not a concern.
What are the new initiatives to achieve the target of $2.5 billion through FCNR (B) deposits by September 30, 2026?
One is connecting with the NRIs. We have large franchise and good NRI base. We have started connecting all tools. We are explaining this product. Reaching out to the people that is one important strategy, and second strategy is explaining the benefits that NRI can derive from this. We are hopeful of achieving the target.
You have given a guidance of 7 per cent for growth related to Net Interest Income (NII). However, growth during first quarter was 2.1 per cent. How are you going to achieve this kind of guidance?
We have started building the good quality credit book now and now we have come out from the challenge of having low holding advances. Cost of deposit has started coming down. Mobilisation of the FCNR (B) deposit also will reduce the cost of deposit because whatever we are going to mobilise, it will not carry the CRR-SLR purpose also. To that extent, the cost of deposit will come down. so. We are working on both the front - cost of deposit and yield on advances and I am expecting that good growth should happen on the NII front from now onwards.
