Non-food credit growth up to 10.7 per cent for April: RBI

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank today said non-food credit growth accelerated to 10.7 per cent for April as against 4.5 per cent in the year-ago period, led by retail and the services sector.

The non-food credit grew 10.7 per cent to Rs 76,130 billion as on April 27, the central bank said.

The gross bank credit, including the food credit, was up 10.4 per cent during the same period, as against 3.8 per cent in the year-ago period.

The data includes performance of 41 scheduled commercial banks, accounting for about 90 per cent of the total non-food credit deployed, it said.

Loans to both the medium and large corporates were better than the year-ago period, but the sluggishness was visible with growth of only 1 per cent and 3.6 per cent, respectively.

Credit to major sub-sectors such as textiles, engineering, food processing, construction and rubber and plastic accelerated, while infrastructure, basic metal and metal products, chemicals and chemical products, gems and jewellery and cement and cement products contracted, it said.

Personal loans segment grew 19.1 per cent during the month, led by housing (14.9 per cent growth), advances against fixed deposits (22 per cent) and credit card outstanding (35 per cent growth), the apex bank data said.

Among services, which saw a 20.7 per cent growth, the non-bank lenders were the fastest growing segment at 29.5 per cent, followed by a 15.2 per cent growth for the retail trade, the data said.

Loans to the shipping trade de-grew 13.7 per cent during the month, which is an improvement from the 25.1 per cent de-growth in the year-ago period.

Priority sector loans growth slowed down to 5 per cent from the 5.7 per cent in the year-ago period, and included a 52 per cent dip in export credit and 40 per cent uptick in the micro-credit, the data said.