Bank credit, deposit growth picks up

With the advent of the festival season bank credit growth has picked up and this is evident from the fact that for the fortnight ended October 5 credit grew by Rs 42,895 crore to Rs 48,09,384 crore compared with a growth of Rs 16,795 crore for the previous fortnight at Rs 47,66,489 crore, shows Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data released Wednesday.

For the fortnight ended October 5 deposits of the banking system grew by Rs 1,20,162 crore to Rs 64,11,036 crore compared with a fall of Rs 30152 crore for the previous fortnight at Rs 62,90,874 crore.
   
On a year-on-year basis credit grew by 15.90% and deposits grew by 13.89%.

The first half of the current fiscal has been sluggish in terms of credit growth. But bankers expect the second half to be better.

To drive credit growth banks are focusing on retail credit in a big way. “I agree that focus is given on retail loans because they are not much subdued at this moment. We are giving emphasis even on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and agriculture loans also. So taking all these loans together we should be able to achieve credit growth target,” said D Sarkar, chairman and managing director, Union Bank of India