The Punjab National Bank (PNB) is planning to further expand its presence overseas with a full-fledged branch in the Sri Lankan capital even as it opened a representative office in Dubai Wednesday.

"PNB is to open a branch in Colombo and a representative office in Singapore in the near future. Details are being worked out for the Colombo branch," S.S. Dabas, deputy general manager of PNB's South Delhi region told here Wednesday.

The nationalised bank is also planning to convert its representative office at Almaty, the Kazakhstan capital, into a full-fledged branch. The representative office has been operational for the past five years.

The bank currently has representative offices in London (opened in 2002) and one in Shanghai, China. The representative offices do liaison work for the bank but do not handle actual money transactions.

Within the country, the bank has 4,500 branches, including extension counters.

PNB has brought more than 1,200 of its branches, spread across 224 cities in the country, under the Centralised Banking Solutions (CBS) system.

The bank registered a net profit of Rs.14.01 billion for fiscal 2004-05 ended March 31, a rise of 27 percent over the previous fiscal.

"PNB was the only nationalised bank to register such a big rise in net profits. In the case of other nationalised banks, their net profits got flattened out," said Dabas.