Buoyed by good quality assets and liabilities of the merged entity of Grindlays Bank, the Standard Chartered Bank on Wednesday announced a 121 per cent growth in post-tax profit of Rs 848 crore (Rs 8.480 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2003.

According to CEO Chris Low, the profit was mostly driven by a 35-37 growth in business operations mainly in areas of retail as well as wholesale banking in India.

While the bank's income grew by 38 per cent to Rs 1,694.1 crore (Rs 16.941 billion), the total assets stood at Rs 29,300 crore (Rs 293 billion), registering a growth of 45 per cent.

The ratio of non-performing assets to net advances improved from 0.40 per cent in the previous year to 0.31 per cent in 2002-03.

Chris also informed the bank's shared services centre in Chennai provided tremendous support in achieving operating efficiencies and cost synergies particularly in areas of product development and processing and settlement of financial transactions.

Bank chief financial officer Sanjeev Agrawal said in Mumbai that the performance reflected the strong underlying business momentum both in consumer and wholesale banking. The retail business contributes around 40 per cent in total business turnover of the bank.

Besides retail, the bank in the current year focused in financing various viable infrastructure projects in telecom, healthcare and national highway construction projects. Further, efforts would be made to enhance the financing of small and medium enterpreneurs to promote their growth in the economy.

UNI