NEWS

Credit growth accelerates to 17.2% in September quarter

Credit growth is broad-based, reflecting pick-up in economic activities; bank deposits stand at 9.8%.

Bank credit growth accelerated to 17.2% in the September quarter from 7% a year ago and 14.2% in the preceding quarter.

Credit growth was broad-based, reflecting pick-up in business activities this year after Covid-19 had hit the economy.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said credit growth remained broad-based with all population and bank groups recording double-digit annual growth.

According to the quarterly statistics on deposits and credit of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), aggregate deposits growth year-on-year, which remained in the close range of 9.5-10.2% since June 2021, stood at 9.8% in September 2022. Since December 2020, bank branches in metropolitan centres have been recording higher annual growth than those in rural, semi-urban and urban areas.

Private sector bank group has been outpacing public sector banks, foreign banks and regional rural banks in deposit mobilisation, the RBI said.

As per the data, year-on-year growth in term deposits rose to 10.2% in September 2022 from 6.4% a year ago. Current and savings deposits growth moderated to 8.8% and 9.4% from 17.5% and 14.5%, respectively, a year ago.

"The share of savings deposit in total deposits, which increased from 32.4% in June 2019 to a peak of 35.2% in June 2022, moderated marginally to 34.7% in the latest quarter," the RBI said.

All-India credit-deposit (C-D) ratio increased further to 74.8% in September 2022 from 73.5% a quarter ago and 70% a year ago. The C-D ratio for metropolitan bank branches, which have a dominant share in the banking business, stood much higher at 87.6% in September 2022 (82.8% a year ago).