Credit growth in SBI is an unfinished agenda: Arundhati Bhattacharya

A day before, Rajnish Kumar, Bhattacharya's successor, told the media that reviving credit growth and resolution of stressed assets will be his top priority.

Heading any bank and especially the public sector, during an economic scenario that India is currently facing, is always a difficult task and no leader can finish all the tasks by the time they leave the organisation.

The bank is also working on a digital product which has been delayed from July and will be delivered next month, Bhattacharya said in her last public interaction with reporters as SBI Chairman.

Post merger

Speaking about the after-effects of the merger of its associates and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself from April 1, 2017, the outgoing Chairman said, “Post the merger there were some customers who moved from the bank. But we are very quickly gaining ground. We had to take some short-term pains because the merging entities were a little unsure. They did not get access to the right system, they need new products…We are still training those employees. By December we will finish the training."

We are seeing these impact in the states where merger has happened. In the states where the merger has not happened our growth rate has not fallen, she added.

GST

SBI is also working on a model where it will give working capital loans based on your input and output and the GST returns.

She said the government’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) has huge benefits and will improve efficiency and the time taken to transfer the goods. "There are very big positives for GST. If we keep looking at difficulties, we will never understand are the positives."

She added that SBI has done everything possible to improve our understanding and monitoring of risk, of improving processes, our credit underwriting standards, our follow-up processes.