Data on sectoral deployment of bank credit for the month of March 2023¹ collected from 40 select scheduled commercial banks, accounting for about 93 per cent of the total non-food credit deployed by all scheduled commercial banks, are set out in Statements I and II.

On a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, non-food bank credit² registered a growth of 15.4 per cent in March 2023 as compared with 9.7 per cent a year ago.

Highlights of the sectoral deployment of bank credit are given below:

• Credit to agriculture and allied activities rose by 15.4 per cent (y-o-y) in March 2023 as compared with 9.9 per cent a year ago.

• Credit to industry registered a growth of 5.7 per cent (y-o-y) in March 2023 as compared with 7.5 per cent in March 2022. Size-wise, credit to large industry rose by 3.0 per cent as compared with 2.0 per cent a year ago. Credit growth of medium industries was 19.6 per cent as against 54.4 per cent a year ago. Credit to micro and small industries registered a growth of 12.3 per cent in March 2023 (23.0 per cent a year ago).

• Within industry, credit growth to ‘basic metal and metal products’, ‘chemical and chemical products’ and ‘petroleum, coal products and nuclear fuels’ accelerated in March 2023 as compared with the corresponding month of the previous year while that to ‘food processing’, ‘infrastructure’ and ‘textiles’ decelerated/contracted.

• Credit growth to services sector accelerated to 19.8 per cent (y-o-y) in March 2023 from 8.7 per cent a year ago, due to the improved credit offtake to ‘Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs)’ and ‘trade’.

• Personal loans registered a growth of 20.6 per cent (y-o-y) in March 2023 as compared with 12.6 per cent a year ago, primarily driven by ‘housing loans’.

Ajit Prasad           
Director (Communications)

Press Release: 2023-2024/139

¹ Data pertain to the last reporting Friday of the month.

² Non-food credit data are based on Section-42 return for the last reporting Friday of the month, which covers all scheduled commercial banks (SCBs).