Till January, bank credit had shown a measly 5.7 per cent growth over the previous year. The pace of growth in retail loans, the main driver of bank credit in India for the past few years, slowed down to 9.1 per cent year-on-year in January against 16.9 per cent a year ago. But loan against gold, the new-found love of Indian bankers and borrowers, staged a phenomenal 132 per cent growth during this period. From a low base of Rs 18,596 crore, the industry’s gold loan portfolio zoomed to Rs 43,141 crore.
This pace of growth is unlikely to sustain. In
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