NEW DELHI, July 14:THE Finance Ministry has agreed to provide a sum of Rs 300 crore to help pull the public sector UCO Bank out of the red.

The chairman and managing director of the bank, Sharda Singh told a press conference here today that the additional capital will be made available within the next few months and will help in the strategy plan of the bank to ``turn the corner'' by 1999.

``Our bank has has drawn a three year strategic revival plan which has been accepted by the finance ministry and the reserve bank with full commitment from the unions and associations,'' said Sharda Singh.

Conceding that the bank had not been performing like someof the other public sector banks, Mr Singh said the organisation has targetted to register a profit of Rs. 100 crore during the Financial year 1998-99. ``In fact we are hopeful of registering operating profitsduring the current Financial year itself as a result of the implementation of our strategy,'' he said.

The bank will also hit the capital market in 1998 or 1999after wiping out losses and turning in profits, Singh said.

As many as between 20 to 25 chronic loss making branches would also be closed during the current Financial year to reduce losses, the managing director of the bank said.

With a view to reduce the Non-Performing Asset (NPA), the bank has involved the staff to pursue on the defaulters and bring in the repayments due from them, Sharda Singh said.

As against the current net npa level of 13.96 per cent, the bank hopes to bring it down to around 5 to 6 per cent, the Chief executive officer of the bank said.

As against the domestic gross NPA of Rs 1592 crore, thenet npa stood at only 768 crore he said adding that the gross NPA provides for ``unrecovered amount on interest on surplus accounts''. The bank will also decide on the issue of seeking writeoffs from the government on its losses after putting in place the strategy for reviving the bank and wiping out outstandings.

``We have decided to concentrate on providing qualityloans so that its recovery process is stable and we will not provide advances to those companies whose rating are not high,'' he said.

A monitoring committee consisting of managingrepresentative and Union associations has been set up at head office and zonal offices level to monitor the progress under ''strategic revival plan'' (srp) on a monthly basis, Sharda Singh said.

As a loss making bank, the progress of the uco bank willbe monitored by the reserve bank on a quarterly basis, said Sharda Singh adding that the bank has decided to provide only 45 per cent of its incremental deposits for advances which was lower as compared to other banks.

For expediting recovery in npa, apart from follow-ups with debt recovery tribunals (drts) and advocates, the bank has formed committees at all levels including settlement advisory committee at the head office level.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.