DUBAI: Bank of India, India's third largest lender, is seeking the Qatar Central Bank's (QCB) permission to open a representative office at Doha.
On his visit to Qatar, BoI executive director K R Kamath met Qatar QCB governor Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud al-Thani to seek permission to open up the office.
Kamath said the bank had already received the Indian banking regulator's permission to set up a representative office in Qatar.
"I have met the QCB governor and submitted our application for the Doha representative office. I am hopeful the Qatari authorities will consider our application favourably," he was quoted as saying in Gulf Times.
Kamath said the bank was not looking at the possibility of entering the Qatar Financial Centre.
"That's not the kind of business we are looking at in Qatar. We wish to do retail business here," he said, adding that it would open its first representative office in the GCC region in Dubai next month as it has already received a licence for the Dubai office.
BoI has online remittance facility to some 2,000 branches across the country. Indian expatriates in Qatar can avail of speed remittance facility to these and another 30,000 branches of other Indian banks through Almana Exchange's two Doha branches.
The bank has access to Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), a nationwide computer link owned by Reserve Bank of India.
