Bank credit to industry decelerates to 5.4% in October, reveals RBI data

Bank credit to industry decelerated to 5.4 per cent in October compared to 13.5 per cent in the year-ago month, according to Reserve Bank data released on Thursday.

The data also revealed that credit growth to agriculture and allied activities improved to 17.5 per cent (year-on-year) in October 2023 from 13.8 per cent a year ago.

Among major industries, credit growth (year-on-year) to basic metal & metal products, food processing and textiles accelerated in October 2023, while that to all engineering, chemicals and chemical products and infrastructure decelerated.

Advances to the services sector grew by 20.1 per cent (y-o-y) in October 2023 compared to 22.5 per cent a year ago, with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and trade being the major contributors.

Further, personal loan growth decelerated to 18 per cent annually in October 2023 against 20.5 per cent a year ago.

On a year-on-year basis, non-food bank credit2 registered a growth of 15.3 per cent in October 2023 compared to 18.3 per cent in the year-ago period.

According to the RBI, data on sectoral deployment of bank credit for October 2023 is collected from 41 select banks, accounting for about 95 per cent of the total non-food credit deployed by all commercial banks.