Chandra Shekhar Ghosh

The income tax concessions proposed in the Union budget will promote more savings and propel growth in deposits, which in turn, will help the banking industry, Bandhan Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chandra Shekhar Ghosh said on Wednesday. In her budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced no tax for those with an annual income of up to Rs 7 lakh under the new tax regime but made no changes for those who continue in the old regime that provides for tax exemptions and deductions on investments and expenses such as HRA. "For the last year, we have witnessed that the deposit growth is less than normal. The new tax norms proposed in the budget will encourage people to save more, and in turn, it will normalise the growth in deposits. It indeed will help the banking industry. When the deposit growth increases, the credit flow also increases," he said. In what is being seen as a push for the salaried class taxpayer to switch to the new tax regime

Currently, 39 per cent of the asset book is secured

Ghosh says bank is looking to increase branch count to 8,000 nationally from the current 5,640

Bandhan Bank will open 551 more branches in the 2022-23 fiscal, as a part of the lender's focus to make its distribution stronger in other parts of India outside the eastern region, MD & CEO Chandra Sekhar Ghosh said. With the latest addition, the Kolkata-headquartered bank's branch count will exceed 6,000, he said. "India is a huge country and just one Bandhan Bank of the scale at which we are right now is not enough. So, we have to scale up even further and even faster. "Majority of these (new branches) will be outside of east India, where we are already very strong in penetration. Bolstering our distribution in other parts of the country is a key focus for us," Ghosh said here at the seventh anniversary celebrations of Bandhan Bank on Monday night. He said the bank's push for digital and tech transformation has been a great success, with 92 per cent of the total transactions taking place through the digital route. Ghosh also said Bandhan Bank will continue to expand its product

'When we started the bank seven years back, 98 per cent of the loan book was micro and group loans; now it is 47 per cent'

In the previous quarter, it had earned net profit worth Rs 859 crore

Bandhan Bank MD & CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is hopeful that the economy will rebound by the third and fourth quarters of the current fiscal, enabling the lender to meet its targets. He said the bank had exercised caution amid the COVID-19 pandemic and made additional provisioning in the last quarter of 2020-21. "We remain cautiously optimistic for the current fiscal as we have made additional provisioning as safeguard. The second wave of Covid pain is expected to subside in the next two-three months, and this time people are better geared than the first wave that took everyone by surprise. "The worst seems to be over, and the economy will rebound by the time major lending business happens in Q3 and Q4, to meet our targets," Ghosh told PTI. On NPAs, he said the numbers will come down with time as borrowers are aware about missing repayments amid the pandemic scenario. "I recently went to an area where NPAs are high, and people acknowledged Bandhan's role in developmen

About 71% of Bandhan's banking outlets are located in rural and semi-urban areas

The first dilution had to be done in three years. We now have five years in hand to reduce to 20 per cent, the MD and CEO tells Business Standard

'MFIs need to lend responsibly. We don't do target-based lending', said Ghosh

Ghosh was commended for his deep knowledge of lending, having technology-focused lending operations and keeping the work force motivated

Chandra Shekhar Ghosh has turned a small microfinance NGO into a formidable private bank

'Most of our borrowers lack income proof. We are seeing how we can use IT to gather more information about them and take credit decisions', said Ghosh

The jury said Ghosh, 59, deserved the award for the all-round performance of Bandhan Bank

Chandra Shekhar Ghosh has been a cautious businessman all through his career, but the acquisition of Gruh Finance appears out of character.