Thiruvananthapuram, May 27: Kerala's State Bank of Travancore (SBT) announced on May 26 that it will soon open a representative office in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

"We have also decided to open an exchange house in Bahrain to provide more service for our customers there," K. Sitaramam, managing director of SBT, told reporters here.

SBT currently has rupee drawing arrangements with 16 exchange houses in the Middle East and manages exchange houses in the UAE (four) and Sultanate of Oman (two).

The bank has also introduced an SMS alert system to keep non-resident Indian (NRI) customers updated with their account status via mobile phones.

"In the previous fiscal (2004-05), there was negative growth of non-resident deposits, but in the last fiscal (2005-06) non-resident deposits grew by 9.59 percent over the year ended March 31, 2005, to touch Rs 78.75 billion."