Kolkata, July 27 (IANS) Public sector UCO Bank Wednesday reported a 12.42 percent year-on-year growth in its net profit for April-June 2011, which stood at Rs.292 crore.

Total business of the bank at the end of June this year amounted to Rs.223,626 crore as compared to Rs.200,623 crore in June 2010, registering a growth of 11.47 percent.

Total income during first quarter of 2011-12 fiscal rose by 28.44 percent to Rs.3,676 crore due to healthy growth of 27.26 percent in interest income.

Declaring the results, the bank's chairman and managing director Arun Kaul said: "If you look at (the bank's) credit, it has moved up by 17.55 percent on quarter to quarter basis. Deposits grew by 7.28 percent."

"However, operating profit is slightly lower than the corresponding quarter last year. It is due to increase in cost of deposits, it has gone up to 180 basis points. As a result, net interest margin (NIM) has gone down. NIM for the first quarter was 2.57 percent compared to around 3.07 percent from the last year," he said.

"We expect our business growth will be in the range of 19 to 20 percent this fiscal. We have not revised the target. We still expect the loan growth for this fiscal would be around 19 to 20 percent," Kaul added.