Indian Bank is planning to recover ₹7,000 crore of bad debts in this fiscal against ₹8,800 crore recovered in the year-earlier period, said MD & CEO Shanti Lal Jain.

“Last time, we recovered about ₹8,800 crore. But this number may come down. We will be making a recovery of about ₹7,000 crore,” Mr. Jain said at a press meet.

Asserting that the lender would recover about ₹1,750 per quarter, he said in the first quarter it had recovered ₹1,937 crore. Cash recovery was more than the slippages of ₹1,928 crore, the CEO said.

Elaborating further, he said MSMEs accounted for slippages of ₹900 crore, followed by agri (₹600 crore) and ₹400 crore from retail.

“We also recovered ₹300 crore. In Q1, we contained the slippage ratio from 1.57% to 1.5%,” Mr. Jain said.

On the fund raising, he said the bank was adequately capitalised. Besides, approvals had been obtained from the board and shareholders to raise ₹5,000 crore through equity, ₹2,000 crore through Tier II Bonds and ₹5,000 crore of infra bonds in FY25.

To a question on how much the lender was planning to recover through asset reconstruction company (ARC), he said last year the bank recovered ₹464 crore via ARC and plans to recover ₹400 crore in this fiscal.

Mr. Jain said that the bank was targeting 8-10% growth in deposits and 11-13% in credit. In Q1, it achieved 10% and 12% respectively. Regarding branch expansion, he said last year it was 79 branches and this year the target was 100, of which approval had been given to open 30 branches soon.

The bank’s RAM and corporate sector advances were in the ratio of 62:38. Mr. Jain said that they would like to maintain the same ratio as the risk was spread and giving good revenue.