A bank of Indian heritage thrives in Africa

LUSAKA - On the ground floor of a squat building in downtown Lusaka, tellers sit inside tiny wooden cabins, counting out money. The busy scene is as ordinary as at any other bank, but the provenance of this financial firm is a rather unique experiment, beginning nearly 6,600 km away - in India.

The Indo-Zambia bank, as is evident from its nomenclature, was born of a mixed parentage of three Indian state banks and the Zambian government in 1984.

Or as 57-year-old Satish Shukla, the bank’s managing director, described, “it is a joint venture of four cultures”. It is also the first ever project in which three Indian banks - Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Central Bank of India - came together on an overseas platform, each contributing 20 percent towards the share capital, with the rest held by the government of Zambia.

This bank came into existence during the heyday of the Non Aligned Movement, when Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and India’s Indira Gandhi were striding the global stage propounding South-South cooperation.

Twenty-five years on, the bank still exists and thrives, with 12 branches, 260 local employees, nine Indian chief managers, one Indian managing director and a Zambian chairperson.

Fluorescent lights illuminate the high-ceiling hall, which is filled with employees working and flitting between scores of desks, piled with files, while clients sit on recessed window seats or stand patiently in a queue.

Not that it has always been easy. It survived the crisis in banking industry in Zambia during 1995-97, when eight banks folded up.

Their secret - “We have been running the bank in a typical conservative Indian manner,” Shukla told a visiting IANS correspondent.

While the global recession did not impact Zambia in the last two years because of its small economy , it did go through a turbulent time in 2008 due to the sharp drop in the price of copper - the county’s life blood.

With profitability under strain, plans to open new branches were shelved for 2009-10. But, with copper prices having relatively bounced back, “next year we would definitely aim to open two-three more branches”.

Shukla was quick to emphasise that financial fundamentals were strong. “We have been pretty aggressive in expanding credit. In the last three years, credit has grown by 50 percent, deposits have grown by 30 percent and capital adequacy ratio is 40 percent,” he said. The total deposits are now 679,764 million Kvacha (Rs.679.76 crore/about Rs. 6.8 billion/US$130 million).

In fact, it has perhaps the lowest proportion of gross non-performing assets (NPA) to gross advance among banks in Zambia. “Here, the banking sector NPA to gross advances is 13 percent, which has in fact increased from eight percent two years ago… Ours is less than one percent. I think it is the best rate among the banks here,” said Shukla, a native of Mumbai, who has been in Lusaka since September 2008.

The increase in NPA in the Zambian banking industry was due to the aggressiveness in giving personal loans. “They were even sitting in malls and giving loans. And here once you lose your job, it is difficult to repay the personal loans,” explained Shukla.

With Indian companies increasingly coming to Africa and Zambia for investment opportunities, there is scope to further expand bank operations. “All the Indians who want to set up any business here, naturally the tendency is to come here directly,” said Shukla.

With Indian bankers, all of them on deputation for four years, working closely with local employees it is not surprising that some of their ways have rubbed on to them.

G.H.R. Haminza, the bank’s senior-most Zambian employee, who joined in 1989, got trained in the Central Bank of India. He was on attachment to the Bank of Baroda and is currently general manager.

He even sports a steel bangle, known as kara, on his right wrist. “I saw an Indian working with me trying to open a bottle of coke with this, instead of a bottle opener. So I said give it to me. Now I wear it,” Haminza told IANS.

With one out of four board meetings held in India, Haminza considers himself well-travelled in the sub-continent, having visited remote places like the Andaman Islands and the Himalayan state of Sikkim. “I have seen more of India than most Indians,” Haminza, said, adding, “I am perhaps more Indian than most.”

(Devirupa Mitra can be contacted at devirupa.m@ians.in)