Public sector, Central Bank of India is planning to expand its overseas presence and has sent a proposal for the same to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The bank wants to start its representative offices in five places including Singapore, Dubai, Doha, London and Hong Kong.

The public lender has approached RBI to take permission for opening offices in foreign countries. This is the first time bank is planning to start an independent international venture after the 1970s scam, when the bank was compelled by RBI to shut down its office in London.

Chairman and Managing Director of Central Bank, H A Daruwalla said, "We are awaiting RBI's approval to expand our business overseas. We would like to open there by the end of this financial year."

The bank plans to enhance its export-import business and NRE and FCNR deposits from abroad and this new venture complements these targets. As the rupee is depreciating, the banks are competing to attract funds associated to trade and NRI deposits.

Presently the bank has only one international office which is in combined ownership with Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Government of Zambia. Under this joint venture, each bank holds 20% stake while the Zambian government holds the rest 40%.

The bank seems to be in its expansionary path on all directions as it also plans to recruit 1,000 clerks by the end of the current fiscal. It has recently upgraded its existing employees under various positions. Around 2,000 clerical level employees have been promoted to the probationary officers' cadre where as scale-II and III employees are promoted directly to scale-IV and V respectively.

Even on the technology side, the bank has allocated funds worth Rs 125-150 crore in order to execute the core banking services (CBS) to 1,070 branches by the end of March 2009. Currently 700 branches of the bank are under the CBS platform.

Mr. Daruwalla said, "Our aim is to become 100 percent CBS compliant by March 2010."