Credit growth to industry picked up in October, shows RBI data

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Credit growth to industry picked up to 4.1 percent in October 2021 from a contraction of 0.7 percent in October 2020, according to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Size-wise, credit to medium industries registered a robust growth of 48.6 percent in October 2021 as compared to 20.8 percent last year, the data showed.

Credit to micro and small industries accelerated to 11.9 percent in October 2021 from 0.7 percent a year ago.

Also, credit growth to large industries stood at 0.5 percent in October 2021 as compared to a contraction of 1.8 percent a year ago.

The RBI releases data on sectoral deployment of bank credit collected from select 33 scheduled commercial banks, which account for about 90 percent of the total non-food credit deployed by all scheduled commercial banks.

At the same time, credit to agriculture and allied activities continued to perform well, registering an accelerated growth of 10.2 percent in October 2021 as compared to 7.2 percent in October 2020, the RBI data showed.

On the other hand, the slowdown in credit growth of services continued, as it decelerated to 2.9 percent in October 2021 from 8.6 percent a year ago, the RBI said.

Notably, personal loans continued to grow at a robust rate of 11.7 percent in October 2021 vis-a-vis 8.7 percent in October 2020 primarily due to ‘housing’, ‘vehicle loans’ and ‘loans against gold jewellery’, the RBI said.