Central Bank of India opens representative office in Hong Kong to tap biz potential

Central Bank CMD R Rishi

India's third largest public sector bank by branches Central Bank of India on Thursday said it has opened a representative office in Hong Kong. The representative office will facilitate the bank to tap the huge business potential in the thriving island city by providing marketing and liaisoning, its chairman and managing director Rajeev Rishi said in a statement.
He said the office will not engage...
in core banking but will use its local presence to explore business opportunities with the aim of establishing a long-term presence and penetrate the markets.
The bank is planning to open branches in a host of other countries, including China, Bhutan, Tanzania and Mozambique. This is being done to get more international business and provide banking facilities to NRI population.
The Mumbai-headquartered lender earlier launched Internet-based remittance service, called Cent Fast2 India, in association with Bank of New York Mellon, for Non-Residents Indian residing in the US. At present, Central Bank of India has one overseas office in Zambia, which is a joint venture with Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and the Zambian government. The Zambian government holds 40 percent stake and each of the banks has 20 percent. Recently, it has also opened a representative office at Nairobi, Kenya.
The bank has earlier approached the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for permission to open representative offices in five more locations - Singapore, Dubai, Doha and London.

CMD Rajeev Rishi will inaugurate the Representative office of the bank in the presence of Ramesh S Singh, general manager-Inernational Division of the Bank, NRIs.

Hongkong is a huge market for India as a sizable portion of the affluent population are Indians. So it's obvious that Indian banks are targeting them.
Central Bank of India has its large network in 27 out of 29 states and three out of seven Union Territories with 4336 branches.
The Government of India is already holding 85 percent stake in Central Bank of India and with the latest decision to infuse additional Rs 1,800 crore by December end, government’s share will go up to 89 percent in the public sector bank.
India's largest public sector lender SBI has the maximum 183 foreign offices in 35 countries across the globe to cater to the needs of NRI customers. Punjab National Bank has its foreign branches in Hong Kong, Kabul and Dubai. Another PSU bank Allahabad Bank also opened its foreign branch in Hong Kong and a representative office in Shenzhen, China.