Public sector banks (PSBs) disbursed a record Rs 2.52 lakh crore of loans during the festive month of October, as the Centre had asked PSBs to conduct special credit deployment programmes in 400 districts in two phases. State-owned lenders disbursed Rs 2,52,589 crore of loans during the month through special camps in 374 districts and through all other branches, the Finance Ministry said Thursday. As much as Rs 1,05,599 crore was given towards new term loans, while Rs 46,800 crore was disbursed as new working capital loans. So, fresh lending, including new term loans, was 60 per cent of the total disbursement, it said. In order to boost credit availability in the economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in September asked banks to reach out to customers and hold special credit disbursal camps while keeping in mind prudential norms. Under her direction, outreach camps or loan melas were conducted across 374 districts across the country during October. Credit to NBFCs during the month was Rs 19,627.26 crore, the statement said. Credit deployment programmes were conducted by banks in participation with private banks and NBFCs in 226 districts from October 1-9 in Phase-I and 148 districts from October 21-25 in Phase-II. “PSBs actively reached out to their customers in these camps and made concerted efforts towards activities such as sanctioning of loans as per prudential norms, opening of accounts along with Aadhaar and mobile seeding of accounts, and popularising BHIM app. The drive also simultaneously galvanised similar outreach efforts in individual branches of PSBs i.e. outside the camps,” the Ministry said. As per the data released, corporates availed the maximum of Rs 1.22 lakh crore of loans during October 2019, followed by agriculture loans (Rs 40,504 crore) and MSMEs (Rs 37,210 crore). Home loans worth Rs 12,166 crore were given by banks while vehicle loans stood at Rs 7,058 crore. Out of the total credit, Rs 19,627.26 crore was given to NBFCs, the co-origination alone was to the tune of Rs 15,297.18 crore and pool buyout was Rs 1,453.13 crore. While corporates took the most loans in October from PSU banks, separate data by the Reserve Bank shows that growth in bank credit to industries slowed to 2.7 per cent in September — the lowest in the last 12 months. This is after having recovered earlier this year to hit a four-and-a-half-year high of 6.9 per cent in April. The RBI data showed that gross bank credit, too, grew by just 8.2 per cent in September — the lowest in 22 months. Gross bank credit saw double-digit year-on-year growth in each of the months between April 2018 and July 2019.
