According to SBI chairman Janki Ballabh, the provisioning will be made keeping in mind shareholders' value and the RBI's circular allowing public sector commercial banks to amortise the VRS outgo over a period of five years. Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, the SBI chairman said that altogether 33,000 employees, including 17,000 officers, had applied for the VRS, which closed on January 31.

``But under no circumstance we will allow the outgo to cross the 23,000 mark, since our motto is more to retain staff than relieving them,'' he said. Admitting that excessive application in certain circles and minimum application in some might result in an imbalance in staff strength in different circles, Mr Ballabh said that this problem will be solved by rational redeployment of staff. He added that the first batch of products from its insurance joint venture will hit the market by the end of the current financial year.

According to him intially the joint venture company will come out with banking related insurance products. The authorised capital of the insurance joint venture with Cardiff of France is Rs 260 crore and the initial paid-up capital is Rs 175 crore.

The SBI chairman said that the bank has laid special emphasis on the reduction of its non-performing assets and the management has targetted a net NPA to 5.7 per cent by the end of the current financial year from 6.4 per cent recorded during the fiscal ended March 31, 2000. He said the total provision for the NPA during the current year will be around Rs 1,500 crore.

The total deposits of SBI currently stands at Rs 1,90,000 crore against a total advance of Rs 1,03,000 crore and the balance-sheet size of over Rs 3,00,000 crore. ``We are planning to double our business over the next four years,'' he added.