Non-food bank credit offtake slows to 6.5% in February

Bank credit offtake in the non-food sector slowed to 6.5 per in February 2021 on an annual basis, mainly on account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Also, the slowdown in growth of personal loans continued as it decelerated to 9.6 per cent in February 2021 from 17 per cent a year ago, said the RBI's data on sectoral deployment of bank credit collected from select 33 commercial banks on Wednesday.

On a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, non-food bank credit growth stood at 6.5 per cent in February 2021 as compared with 7.3 per cent in February 2020, it said.

These 33 banks account for about 90 per cent of the total non-food credit deployed by all banks during February.

However, continuing its uptrend, credit growth to agriculture and allied activities accelerated to 10.2 per cent in February 2021 from 5.8 per cent in February 2020, said the RBI's data on sectoral deployment of bank credit collected from select 33 scheduled commercial banks.

"Credit to industry contracted marginally by 0.2 per cent in February 2021 as compared to 0.7 per cent growth in February 2020, mainly due to contraction in credit to large industries by 1.5 per cent (0.7 per cent growth in February 2020)," the central bank said.

It further said credit to medium industries registered a robust growth of 21 per cent in February 2021 as compared to 3.9 per cent a year ago. Credit to micro and small industries registered a growth of 1.5 per cent as compared to a contraction of 0.4 per cent a year ago.

Within industry, credit to 'food processing', 'beverages and tobacco', 'mining and quarrying', 'textiles', 'gems and jewellery', 'paper and paper products', 'glass and glassware' and 'vehicles, vehicles parts and transport equipment' registered accelerated growth in February 2021 year-on-year.

However, credit growth to 'petroleum, coal products and nuclear fuels', 'cement and cement products', 'all engineering', 'chemicals and chemicals products', 'rubber, plastic and their products', 'basic metal and metal products', 'construction' and 'infrastructure' decelerated/contracted.

As per the RBI, credit growth to the services sector accelerated to 9.3 per cent in the month under review from 6.9 per cent in February 2020, mainly due to good performance of credit to transport operators and trade.