Srinagar, Sept 3: M Y Khan who lead J&K Bank from a cooperative bank image to a corporate entity during his over eight year’s tenure says his contributions are deliberately being undermined posing a question mark over the contributions he made. Bank’s credit off take at the end of his term, he says was over Rs 5000 crores and not Rs 1200 crores as is being projected.
“It is a financial jugglery to let loose a reign of misinformation campaign among the general masses,” Khan told Greater Kashmir in an exclusive interview. When my successor (read Dr Haseeb Drabu) quotes the figure of Rs 1200 crores as the total credit off-take in J&K in 2005, he deliberately omits thousands of crores of investment that the bank had made by way of overdraft to various organs of the state, Khan said. “But when he mentions Rs 12000 crores of credit off take at the end of his tenure he deliberately forgets to exclude the OD and other investments within the state,” he added.
Khan said almost half of the Rs 11000 crores advances of the banks were invested in J&K alone. “It is unethical and an attempt to distort facts,” he asserts.
Insisting that the fundamentals of the bank were not weak at the time he demitted office in 2005 as is being projected, Khan said the bank had recorded the highest ever profit of Rs 406 crores in 2003-04. A year later, the entire banking sector went into the tailspin as tremors of inflation led to hardening of interest rates which depreciated investment portfolios and impacted the yields.
“I could have easily booked a net profit of Rs 350 crores for the fiscal 2004-05 but I didn’t,” Khan said. “Instead, I did a provisioning of Rs 250 crores in order to insulate the securities portfolio from future market risk and to reduce the duration of its investment portfolio.” This, he said was done for him (Dr Drabu) so that he would be able to absorb the future market shock. Khan says J&K Bank was the only bank that resorted to such provisioning in that later. All others did but a year later. “I sacrificed my performance for the safety of my successor and in the interest of the bank,” he said.
Khan said in the entire debate the larger story of his performance is missing altogether. “When I took over the bank it was making Rs 18 crores of profit a year and when I left it was at Rs 406 crores in 2003-04 – an appreciation by 23 times,” Khan said. Business turnover increased from Rs 4200 crores to Rs 37000 crores and the credit portfolio jumped from Rs 1364 crores to Rs 11500 crores. Even the deposits increased from Rs 2895 crores to Rs 21644 crores. “Even the share price of the appreciated from Rs 38 to Rs 356 per share,” he said.
Khan said his performance can be compared with that of his successor so that the truth comes out. “If the growth of the bank achieved during my time would have been maintained, the bank’s profits at the end of the last fiscal would have been more than Rs 1000 crore,” Khan claimed.

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