MUMBAI: Bank loans to NBFCs touched nearly Rs 15 lakh crore in November – a growth of about 22% over the previous year – at a time when RBI placed curbs on bank loans to this segment. NBFCs cornered close to 10% of non-food bank credit, RBI data showed. RBI, in its financial stability report, said that stress in the NBFC sector has been assessed to be higher than the March 2023 position. “Contagion risk may warrant monitoring on account of increased interbank exposure,” it noted.
According to the data, home loans with banks touched Rs 25.9 lakh crore in November. This is the largest segment of bank credit and accounts for nearly 31% of all bank loans. The highest growth in bank credit was recorded by personal loans, which grew just over 30% year-on-year, bolstered by the merger of HDFC with HDFC Bank in July 2023. Excluding this, the growth in personal loans would have been 18.6%.
The growth in loans to NBFCs came despite the merger of HDFC with HDFC Bank, which resulted in bank loans to NBFCs being recategorised as interbank loans.
Credit cards outstanding touched Rs 2.5 lakh crore in November – nearly 1.5% of overall bank credit. Credit to the manufacturing industry continued to grow at 6.6% year-on-year, with loans to large industry growing by 4.1%. Loans to the gems & jewellery segment grew the fastest at 18% year-on-year to Rs 92,255 crore.
The central bank had also raised concerns over NBFCs raising loans from as many as 40 banks, which it felt was diluting the oversight of loans. “Lenders as a group should take a call what should be the way forward so that they have good underwriting standards as well as good post-sanction monitoring,” RBI deputy governor J Swaminathan had said at a recent SBI event.
