India’s largest commercial bank, The State Bank of India (SBI), plans to grow its footprint in Africa, retaining focus on corporate business, its South African customers and secured small, medium-sized and microenterprises, SBI international banking MD Krishna Kumar said during a visit to South Africa last week.

He noted that, during the bank’s 17-year presence in South Africa, during which it had established eight branches, the focus had been largely on the Indian community and corporate market, offering trade and corporate finance services to companies in the power and energy, infrastructure, automotive, mining, iron and steel, and industrial-related markets.

“We are now looking at expanding into the larger community in South Africa and further into the corporate market. As a result, we will be increasing our asset base from the current R4.5-billion to about R10-billion over the next few years.

“Local return on assets is between 2% and 3%, which is high, based on global standards,” said the bank.

In the rest of Africa, the bank had operations in Botswana, Mauritius, Cairo and Nigeria through SBI’s stake in Sterling Bank.

Kumar was confident in the South African economy and saw significant potential. The bank projected 2% gross domestic growth for South Africa this year.

He added that the group’s worldwide growth strategy was based on organic growth by partnering with existing banks rather than by acquisition.

“In the time the bank has been in South Africa, we have never shown a loss. Profits are retained in the country and never taken out. We want to build a solid institution in South Africa and are here for the long term,” he noted.

The Indian government is the single-largest shareholder of the SBI, with 58.6% ownership.

The group has over 21 000 branches in India and another 190 offices in 36 countries across the world.

Group assets are currently around $392-billion, deposits of $299-billion and capital and reserves in excess of $23-billion, while the bank’s market capitalisation is some $30-billion.