According to Jammu and Kashmir MD, the bank has set a target of ₹5,000 crore loan in the agriculture sector this fiscal and he hopes to cross that mark with much ease. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Jammu and Kashmir Bank’s focus on agriculture and retail lending has helped it register a record profit of ₹485 crore in April-June, the bank’s MD & CEO Amitava Chatterjee said on Monday (July 28, 2025).
J&K Bank on Friday (July 25, 2025) said its profit after tax at ₹484.84 crore in the April-June period of FY26 was the highest-ever in a first quarter so far. The latest Q1 profit was 16.7 per cent higher against ₹415.49 crore recorded in the corresponding quarter a year ago.
Mr. Chatterjee further said the bank would have posted its highest-ever profit for a quarter, had it not set aside ₹87 crore towards investment in the RRB, which was necessitated due to the amalgamation of Ellaquai Dehati Bank in the Union Territory into Jammu and Kashmir Grameen Bank.
“There has been a total transformation in the way the bank has put up a product. We were almost totally dependent on Kissan Credit Cards. Now we have introduced an all-purpose term loan for agriculture that creates an investment credit. The agri sector has already seen a growth of ₹1,500 crore this quarter,” Mr. Chatterjee told PTI in an interview.
The MD said the bank has set a target of ₹5,000 crore loan in the agriculture sector this fiscal and he hopes to cross that mark with much ease.
“Our target is to have ₹5,000 crore this year but as I look at it, it should be much more than that. The way it has been accepted, and the offtake, I would expect it to be more than ₹5,000 crore,” he added.
Mr. Chatterjee said the agri loan product introduced by the bank right in the beginning of the financial year has been a major success.
“The offtake has been so good. I would say that it has beaten other banks, the big banks also. I have seen big banks not having that kind of growth in the agri sector, the kind of growth that we have had,” he said.
‘Phenomenal improvement in retail loal business’
Mr. Chatterjee said the bank’s retail loan business in rest of India has witnessed phenomenal improvement after the lender focussed on expanding its key products there.
“It (expansion) has gone very well in the rest of India, especially the retail products. The growth has been phenomenal, it is 50 to 75 per cent improvement over last year. It was just a matter of identifying a few products since in the rest of India, you compete with all the other banks,” he said.
Mr. Chatterjee said the bank will be very selective on the products and focus on those which have a universal acceptance like home loans and auto loans.
He said while the retail segment has shown positive results, the bank has shed its exposure to the corporate sector.
“Retail has had very good growth this quarter. The corporate has not, because we generally lend to large corporates and they are very very competitive in nature. Consciously, we have shed a bit of it,” he said.
The J&K Bank MD said during the last quarter of the previous financial year, he had very little time to work on internal processes, but the measures taken in the recent past would lead to better business growth.
“We have started it from the first quarter and it went mostly on correcting the processes which will lead to better business growth. For example, we are creating centralised processing sales for corporate, SME as well as agri,” he added.
Published – July 28, 2025 04:08 pm IST
