Personal loans, driven by borrowing for housing and vehicles, rose 19.5% in August 2022 from 12.8% a year ago, according to RBI’s Sectoral Deployment of Bank Credit’ report released recently. Retail loans as a portion of banks’ overall disbursed credit have been rising for the past few years.
Meanwhile, the overall credit growth on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis continued to rise in August after stalling in the last two years due to the pandemic.
Non-food bank credit registered a growth of 16% in August 2022 as compared with 6.7% a year ago.
Credit growth to agriculture and allied activities remained robust at 13.4 per cent in August 2022 (13.0 per cent a year ago).
Credit growth to industry accelerated to 11.4% during the month from 1.5% in August 2021. Size-wise, credit to large industry grew by 6.4% against a contraction of 2.6% a year ago.
Medium industries recorded credit growth of 35.6% as compared with 52.3% last year, while credit growth to micro and small industries accelerated to 28.2% from 12.1% during the same period.
Within industry, credit growth to ‘all engineering’, ‘basic metal & metal products’, ‘beverage & tobacco’, ‘cement & cement products’, ‘chemicals & chemical products’, ‘food processing’, ’glass & glassware’, ‘infrastructure’, ‘leather & leather products’, ‘petroleum, coal products and nuclear fuels’, ‘rubber, plastic & their products’, ‘vehicles, vehicle parts & transport equipment’, and ‘wood & wood products’ accelerated in August 2022 as compared with the corresponding month of the previous year. However, credit growth to ‘construction’, ‘gems & jewellery’, ‘mining and quarrying’, ‘paper & paper products’, and ‘textiles’ contracted.
Credit growth to services sector accelerated to 17.2% in August 2022 from 2.1% a year ago, mainly due to improved credit offtake to ‘NBFCs’ and ‘trade’ sectors. Personal loans growth improved to 19.5 per cent in August 2022 from 12.8 per cent a year ago, driven primarily by ‘housing’ and ‘vehicle loans’ segments.
RBI collects data on sectoral deployment of bank credit from 40 select scheduled commercial banks accounting for about 93% of the total non-food credit deployed by all scheduled commercial banks.
