Public sector Indian Overseas Bank proposes to raise around Rs 1,200 crore this financial

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year as a part of augmenting its growth plans, the bank Chairman and Managing Director M Narendra said.

A resolution to raise the required capital through Qualified Institutional Placements (QIP), rights issue or through Follow-On Public Offer (FPO) was passed at the Chennai headquartered Bank's 11th Annual General Meeting held here.

"We have planned for a 25% growth in our business. It may be through rights issue, or through preferential shares or QIPs," he told reporters after the AGM.

On their overseas expansion plans, he said the Bank has got the approval from the Reserve Bank of India to open branches in China, Dubai, and an additional branch in Bangkok, Thailand.

"The license have come for opening these branches. Yesterday, we got the Board's approval for converting our representative office in Vietnam into full-fledged bank which again we will be taking to RBI," Narendra said.

He added that the Bank also plans to open up its subsidiary in overseas market and is evaluating 15 countries to examine the present market conditions.

"We are looking at having a presence in USA, Europe, Africa, Australia and recently we have got request from Nigeria also... We will be sending our person soon," he said.

Expecting to improve its credit card business, the Bank recently entered into an association with American Express Bank for the launch of co-branded credit cards.

"We already have about 40,000 to 50,000 cards. We are planning to give cards with a prescribed amount to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and also under Educational loan... This is just an idea we need to formalise it... We want to improve our credit card business," Narendra said.

On their proposal for an IT subsidiary, he said the Bank is yet to complete the process in this regard.

Earlier addressing the shareholders, he said the bank's focus was on marketing of insurance products, sale of gold coins and IT enabled products, and conducting of periodic campaigns.

"More thrust area for the current financial year are to improve the CASA (Current Account, Savings Account) ratio and recovery of Non-Performing Assets (NPA)," he added.

Indian Overseas Bank currently has 2,184 branches in the country and six overseas branches. It also has four representative offices in China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Dubai.