Credit Off-Take Reverses Slide, Up Rs 972 Cr
Fall in credit off-take of the banking sector was stemmed in the fortnight ended on June 15. Credit provided by the banking industry went up by Rs 972 crore during the fortnight to Rs 5,16,665 crore as compared with a fall of Rs 4,636 crore in the previous fortnight. Non-food credit went up by Rs 905 crore to Rs 4,67,867 crore, and food credit increased by Rs 67 crore to Rs 48,798 crore.
Credit off-take has, however, remained poor during the current fiscal. Till June 15, 2001, credit growth was 1.5 per cent as compared with 2.5 per cent during the corresponding period of previous fiscal.
Aggregate deposits of commercial banks, however, fell marginally by Rs 56 crore to Rs 10,02,976 crore as compared with an increase of Rs 4,734 crore recorded in the previous fortnight. Though demand deposits fell by Rs 1,817 crore to Rs 1,40,079 crore, time deposits increased by Rs 1,761 crore to Rs 8,62,898 crore.
Along with the fall in deposits, investment made by the banking sector also dipped by Rs 6,556 crore to Rs 3,91,710 crore as compared with a growth of Rs 12,789 crore in the fortnight before. Investments in government securities during the fortnight went down by Rs 6,555 crore, while those in other approved securities fell by Rs 1 crore.
Ways and means advances (WMA) dipped by Rs 5,866 crore to Rs 6,005 crore during the week ended on June 22. Money market analysts, however, expect the WMA to go up once again as the large number of redemption of government securities will force the central government to resort to the facility once again.
Loans and advances to the state government, however, increased very marginally by Rs 3 crore during the week to Rs 3,259 crore.
Foreign exchange reserves of the RBI were up by $ 118 million to $ 43.268 billion during the week ended June 22. The growth in forex reserves is solely on account of an accretion of $118 million to the foreign currency assets. The foreign currency assets as on the reporting week stands at $40.34 billion. Gold reserves and special drawing rights, however, remained unchanged at $2.816 billion and $4 million, respectively.
Money supply measured in terms of M3 rose by 0.3 per cent (Rs 4,029 crore) to Rs 13,71,480 crore in the fortnight ended June 15 over the previous 15 days. Reserve money fell by 3.3 per cent (Rs 10,370 crore) to Rs 2,34,554 crore in the week ended June 22 over the previous week.