Coimbatore, Feb 14 : Laying more focus on MSME segment, Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) will increase its lending to the sector from the present Rs.31,000 crore to rs.50,000 crore in a couple of years
from now, a top official said Friday.

In order to lay focus on MSME, which is the need of the hour, the bank has converted 250 branches, including 100 in Tamil Nadu, into MSME-centric branches and given training to 700 employees for the purpose, IOB Managing
Director and CEO Karnam Sekar told reporters here.

Through its outreach programme, the bank officials are meeting the MSME industrialists to know about the problems being faced by them, he said. After getting the suggestions, the feedback will be placed before the Board of the bank to frame a policy to increase the MSME portfolio to Rs 50,000 crore, which could be in one year to 24 months, Karnam Sekar said.

On performance, the bank, which was in the red for the last four and half years and making loss in the last eight quarters, is hopeful of making profit in the fourth quarter of current financial year, he said.

In the 3rd quarter ended December 2019, IOB reported a net loss of Rs.6,075 crore as against a net loss of rs.346 crore during the corresponding quarters in the previous year on account of higher provisioning of Rs.6,664 crore made for bad debts, Karnam Sekar said.

Stating that the gross NPA has been brought down to 17.12 per cent at the
end of December as compared with 23.76 per cent last fiscal, he said that due
to provision made during the quarter, the net NPA ratio improved to
5.81 per cent, which is less than 6 per cent prescribed by RBI.