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: The centenary celebrations of Canara Bank could not have been sweeter as the bank recorded the highest net profit, nearly Rs 1,110 crore, among nationalised banks in March 2005. Originally founded as Canara Bank Hindu Permanent Fund in 1906, Canara Bank became a limited company in 1910, and turned into a full fledged public sector bank after nationalisation in 1969.

“Our strength is our staff, internally, and customers, externally. The performance of a bank should not be measured on the basis of quarterly results. It is a long-term process and I’m happy that we have been able to perform consistently over the last few years,” said MBN Rao, chairman and managing director, Canara Bank.

In recognition of varied initiatives and excellence in staff training, Canara Bank also won the Employer Branding Awards 2007 and became the first Indian public sector bank to receive this international award.

The total business of the bank currently stands at Rs 2,22,504 crore comprising Rs 1,31,781 crore under deposits and Rs 90,723 crore under advances. According to Rao, infrastructure lending is expected to drive the credit growth in the coming years.

“In the last few years we have registered nearly 20% to 25% growth in credit. Infrastructure lending has been a major growth driver where we registered nearly 30% growth. This year also, I feel, infrastructure credit will drive the growth,” Rao said.

The bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL) for funding infrastructure projects through knowledge sharing basis. In a bid to boost credit growth towards SME (small and medium enterprise) segment the bank has entered into strategic alliance with Karnataka State Financial Corporation, Andhra Pradesh State Financial Corporation and Tamil Nadu Industrial Investment Corporation recently.

On housing loans, Rao said, “We don’t consider home loans as the riskiest segment but we are following a cautious approach. There are some speculative concerns in commercial projects and we are going extremely slow in that segment. Unless, we have a long-term relation with our customer we are not funding commercial real estate projects.”

The bank has joined the National Financial Switch ATM Network of IDRBT and State Bank of India’s ATM Network through which card holders of the bank can have access to more than 14,500 ATMs across the country. The bank has brought nearly 179 branches under core banking platform during December 2006 quarter.