State-owned Government Savings Bank (GSB) aims to achieve an 83-billion-baht increase in its loans outstanding this year, while capping its bad loan ratio at 2.4%.
The bank has set the target for its loan growth at 1.5 times the country's economic growth this year, said president and chief executive Chatchai Payuhanaveechai.
Its loans outstanding rose by 5.9% or 112 billion baht to 2.01 trillion at the end of 2017, he said.
In terms of loan value, GSB was the country's second-largest lender after Siam Commercial Bank's portfolio of 2.03 trillion baht in 2017.
To achieve the loan growth target, GSB will focus on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers, he said.
The bank has targeted to increase its SME loan portfolio by 50% or 48 billion baht, with net profit in a range of 28-30 billion this year.
GSB recorded a net profit of 31.2 billion baht in 2017, up from 25 billion in the previous year. The larger net profit could be largely attributed to its net interest income, which stood at 57.9 billion baht.
"Last year, GSB offered products that met customer needs, while customers had continuous loan demand. We managed to push schemes that were in line with the government's policy at a rapid clip. Those schemes included loans to refinance underground lending, registration of the government's welfare and subsidy scheme for the poor and enhancing financial literacy among small business operators. Meanwhile, the bank was able to develop various financial products to serve customer demand," he said.
It aimed to cap non-performing loans (NPLs) at 2.4% of the loans outstanding at the end of this year, Mr Chatchai said.
The bank's NPLs totalled 41.2 billion baht, representing 2.05% of the total loans at the end of 2017.
The bank had the highest deposits among local banks, he said, adding that total deposits jumped by 4.5% to 2.26 trillion baht at the end of last year.
He said that GSB aims to raise electronic transactions to at least 75% of total transactions this year from 70% last year by raising the number of mobile banking app users to up to 2 million from 2.8 million.
It also plans to increase the number of its QR code payment merchants by 100,000 in 2018.