ICICI Bank on Thursday opened a retail branch in Singapore, with India's High Commissioner T. C. A. Raghavan symbolically signing the first account.
With this, the bank sought to raise its profile under the “Qualified full banking” (QFB) privileges obtained from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in April this year. State Bank of India is the only other Indian banking institution to have been granted such a QFB licence in the City-State. Several other banks from India still operate here on terms that do not equal the wide spectrum of privileges of a QFB licence.
Dr. Raghavan said Thursday's event did in a sense “animate the evolution of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement” between India and Singapore. He saw a role for the banking sector in meeting the funding requirements of India's growing infrastructure sector, variously estimated in the range of $500 billion to $1.5 trillion in the next seven-to-eight years.
ICICI Bank's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chanda D. Kochhar said Singapore, where the institution launched its foreign operations seven years ago, was already its major hub abroad. Besides focusing further on the Singapore market, the bank would now seek to expand its footprint across Southeast Asia.
Later, responding to questions from the media, Ms. Kochhar said ICICI Bank's new QFB privileges and the matter of any Singaporean stake in the institution's capital structure were “two very separate” issues.
