Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of 32nd round of its quarterly Bank Lending Survey (BLS)¹,which captures qualitative assessment and expectations of major scheduled commercial banks on credit parameters (viz., loan demand as well as terms and conditions of loans) for major economic sectors².The latest round of the survey, which was conducted during Q1:2025-26, collected senior loan officers’ assessment of credit parameters for Q1:2025-26 and their expectations for Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2025-26.

A. Assessment for Q1:2025-26

• Bankers’ assessment on loan demand recorded a seasonal moderation across major sectors during Q1:2025-26 (Chart 1 and Table 1).
• Majority of the responding banks assessed continuation of easy terms and conditions for loans (Table 2).

B. Expectations for Q2:2025-26

• Bankers’ outlook on loan demand improved for Q2:2025-26, they expect more loan demand particularly from agriculture, mining and quarrying, manufacturing, and retail/personal loan segments (Table 1).
• Bankers expect some easing of loan terms and conditions, especially for the manufacturing and services sectors (Table 2).

C. Expectations for Q3:2025-26 and Q4:2025-26

• Across major sectors, bankers’ sentiments on loan demand remained upbeat till Q4:2025-26 (Table 3).
• The current easy loan terms and conditions are expected to continue in the second half of 2025-26.

Note:Please see the attached excel file for detailed time series data.

¹The results of 31st round of the BLS with reference period as January-March 2025 were released on the RBI website on April 09,2025. The survey results reflect the views of the respondents, which are not necessarily shared by the Reserve Bank.

²The survey questionnaire is canvassed among major 30 SCBs, which together account for over 90 per cent of credit by SCBs in India.

³Net Response (NR) is computed as the difference of percentage of banks reporting increase/optimism and those reporting decrease/pessimism in respective parameter. The weights of +1.0, 0.5, 0, -0.5 and -1.0 are assigned for computing NR from aggregate per cent responses on 5-point scale, i.e., substantial increase/ considerable easing, moderate increase/ somewhat easing, no change, moderate decrease/ somewhat tightening, substantial decrease/ considerable tightening for loan demand/loan terms and conditions parameters respectively. NR ranges between -100 to 100. Any value greater than zero indicates expansion/optimism and any value less than zero indicates contraction/pessimism. Increase in loan demand is considered optimism (Table 1), while for loan terms and conditions, a positive value of net response indicates easy terms and conditions (Table 2).