ICICI bank expects 20 per cent credit growth rate for the fiscal

Private sector lender ICICI Bank expects a credit growth of 20 per cent in the current fiscal, the bank's CEO and managing director Chanda Kochhar said on the sidelines of an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi today.

The bank's outstanding loan at the end of March 2010 was Rs1,81,206 crore.

However, it had witnessed a decline in credit offtake in the last fiscal from Rs2,18,311 crore in the year ago period.

This was mainly due to the repayments from the retail loan portfolio and the loan portfolio of overseas branches, she had said in a statement.

During 2009-10, ICICI Bank reported a consolidated net profit of Rs4,670.29 crore, up 30.56 per cent from the year ago period.

About financial inclusion initiatives, Kochhar said the bank was planning to reach to about 85,000 to 1 lakh villages over the next three years.

The bank aims to tap around 2 crore customers through its initiatives on financial inclusion. The country has over 6 lakh villages with only 5 per cent having bank branches.

Responding to the takeover code proposals suggested by panel of market regulator SEBI she said it should be seen how it got implemented but certain norms were good.

According to the SEBI Takeover Regulatory Advisory Committee's suggestion made today, open offer trigger should be hiked from the current 15 per cent to 25 per cent and offer size be raised to 100 per cent of the equity in the target company.