SBI hopes to sustain 15% loan growth

New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) said it expects to sustain credit growth of about 15 per cent in the current fiscal with rising demand from retail and corporate borrowers despite hardening of lending rate.

India's largest lender reported a 14.93 per cent rise in advances to Rs29,00,636 crore in the first quarter ended June 30, 2022, as compared to Rs25,23,793 crore during the same period a year ago.

Of this, retail loan registered a growth rate of 18.58 per cent, while corporate advances improved by 10.57 per cent year-on-year at the end of June quarter. SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara also said that the bank will soon come out with only YONO which is YONO 2.0 with many more advanced features and functionalities.

"The digital leadership journey of the bank is continuing. More than 96.6 per cent of the transactions are now routed through alternate channels. The registered users on YONO have already crossed 5.25 crore, a big milestone and which has created a significant value for the bank. Sixty-five per cent of the new savings accounts are opened through YONO," he said at an analyst call recently.

On maintaining 15 per cent credit growth, he said, "I am quite hopeful the reason behind is kind of a term loan and also the underutilisation of the working capital, which is all aggregating to almost Rs5 lakh crore, and the pipeline is almost Rs1.2 lakh crore. So, I'm quite hopeful that we should be in a position to sustain this in the subsequent quarters." Corporate book should grow to the extent of about Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore during the year, he said, adding, even in SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) there are traction and pipeline is getting created. With the latest rate hike by RBI, the repo rate (short term lending rate at which banks borrow from the central bank) increased to 5.40 per cent, an increase of 140 basis points since May this year. On the prevailing economic situation, Khara said the effect of the Covid pandemic has subdued to a large extent, thanks to the governments' massive vaccination programme. The economy is almost on track with the resumption of air travel and removal of other containment measures by most of the countries, he said. However, he said, the volatile geopolitical situation still poses a downside risk. The global output has contracted in the second quarter of this year going to the downturn in China and Russia.