Bank credit to service sector up 17.4% in December

Bank credit to the service sector increased the most in December 2013, growing at 17.4 per cent, compared with the increase of 10.9 per cent in December 2012, data released by the Reserve Bank of India showed.

Personal loans increased by 15.8 per cent in December 2013 helped by rising demand for housing loans, compared with the increase of 13.8 per cent in December 2012, according to RBI data on sectoral deployment of bank credit.

Data collected from select 47 scheduled commercial banks, which account for about 95 per cent of the total non-food credit deployed by all scheduled commercial banks, showed that non-food bank credit increased by 14.8 per cent in December 2013 compared with the increase of 14.3 per cent in December 2012.

Credit to industry as a whole increased by 14.1 per cent in December 2013 against the increase of 15.2 per cent December 2012. The deceleration in credit growth was observed mostly in cement and cement products, infrastructure, metals and metal products, gems and jewellery, mining and quarrying, and petroleum, coal products and nuclear fuels.

Credit to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) increased by 15.1 per cent in December 2013 compared with the increase of 16.5 per cent in December 2012.

Credit to agriculture and allied activities increased at a slow pace of 11.5 per cent in December 2013 compared with the increase of 18.3 per cent in December 2012.

Credit-deposit ratio constant
RBI also released quarterly statistics on deposits and credit of scheduled commercial banks for September 2013, which showed that growth of gross bank credit remained constant at 15.1 per cent in September 2013 compared with a year ago. In metropolitan areas, the credit growth indicated some improvements.

Growth of aggregate deposits decelerated to 11.5 per cent in September 2013, on account of deceleration in deposits across all population groups.

The top hundred centres, arranged according to the size of gross bank credit accounted for 76.7 per cent of gross bank credit and the top hundred centres arranged according to the size of deposits accounted for 67.9 per cent of the aggregate deposits.

The offices with deposits of Rs10 crore or more accounted for 70.1 per cent of the bank offices, 94.8 per cent of gross bank credit and 97.9 per cent of aggregate deposits.

The offices with outstanding gross bank credit of Rs10 crore or more accounted for 96.0 per cent of gross bank credit, 50.0 per cent of the offices and 81.1 per cent of deposits.

Nationalised banks SBI and its associates, and private sector banks accounted for 50.5 per cent, 22.8 per cent and 19.2 per cent of gross bank credit, respectively, and 52.2 per cent, 22.5 per cent and 18.2 per cent of aggregate deposits, respectively.

The credit-deposit (C-D) ratio of all scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) as of 27 September 2013 stood at 77.8 per cent. At the bank group level, foreign banks had a C-D ratio of 89.0 per cent, new private sector banks 84.5 per cent and SBI and its associates had C-D ratio of 78.9 per cent.