Synopsis
• Credit offtake continued to grow, increasing by 20.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach Rs. 160.4 lakh crore, for the fortnight ending January 26, 2024. This rise was due to the impact of HDFC’s merger with HDFC Bank along with the growth in personal loans. If we exclude the impact of the merger, credit grew at a lower rate of 16.1% y-o-y for the fortnight compared to last year’s growth of 16.3%. The outlook for bank credit offtake continues to remain positive.
• Deposits too grew by 13.2% y-o-y for the fortnight (including the merger impact) and reached Rs. 200.6 lakh crore as on January 26, 2024. Excluding merger impact, growth stood at 12.6%.
Sequentially we saw an increase of 0.4%, driven by growth in demand deposits. Deposit growth is expected to improve compared to earlier periods as banks look to shore up their liability franchise and ensure that deposit growth does not constrain the credit offtake.
• The Short-term Weighted Average Call Rate (WACR) stood at 6.72% as of February 2, 2024, compared to 6.28% on February 3, 2023, due to liquidity and pressure on short-term rates.
