Bank credit growth slows to 19 per cent in January-March 2009: RBI
21 Jul 2009
The rate of growth of bank credit in the country declined to around 19 per cent in the last quarter of 2008-09 (January-March 2009) from about 23 per cent a year ago.
Credit growth of nationalised banks, which account for over 50 per cent of the total bank loans in the country, however, fell only marginally to 24.7 per cent during the quarter from 25 per cent in the year-earlier quarter, the Reserve Bank of India's data on quarterly deposits and credits of commercial banks showed.
During the January-March 2009 quarter, deposits with the nationalised banks increased by a marginal 0.1 percentage points to 24.5 per cent.
On the other hand, the State Bank of India and its associate banks saw their lendings grow 21 per cent in January-March 2009 from 20.7 per cent in the comparable quarter of the previous fiscal.
The SBI group accounted for 23.1 per cent of total bank credit during January-March 2009. Deposits with SBI and its associates were also up 4.6 percentage points at 30.5 per cent during the period.
Lending by foreign banks plummeted with their share in total bank credit plummeting to 6 per cent. Foreign banks' credit flow grew by a meagre 3.5 per cent against 27.8 per cent a year ago.
Deposit growth of foreign banks also declined to 21.9 per cent in January-March 2009 from 24.2 per cent during the same period of the previous year.
