Today, the Reserve Bank released its web publication entitled ‘Quarterly Basic Statistical Returns (BSR)-1: Outstanding Credit of Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) - December 2023’ on its ‘Database on Indian Economy’ portal¹ (https://dbie.rbi.org.in Homepage > Publications). It captures various characteristics of bank credit such as occupation/activity and organisational sector of the borrower, type of account and interest rates based on account-level reporting². Data reported by 90 SCBs (excluding Regional Rural Banks) are presented for bank groups, population groups³ and states⁴.

Highlights:

• Bank credit growth stood at 16.1 per cent, net of merger, (y-o-y) in December 2023 (20.3 per cent, including the merger impact).

• Lending by rural and semi-urban bank branches has been in line with overall credit growth; their combined share in total credit stood at 21.4 per cent in December 2023.

• Credit to industry increased by 9.5 per cent (y-o-y) in December 2023, which was comparable to the growth a year ago.

• Personal loans continued to expand and its share in total credit stood at 30.9 per cent in December 2023 (28.6 per cent in previous year).

• The share of women borrowers in total credit is relatively low (10.7 per cent in December 2023) but it is growing at robust pace, and has outpaced the growth in loans to male borrowers over the last seven quarters.

Ajit Prasad            
Director (Communications)

Press Release: 2023-2024/1971

¹ Banking aggregates based on fortnightly Form-A Return (collected under Section 42(2) of the RBI Act, 1934) for the last reporting Friday of December 2023 were published earlier at our website (Home>Statistics>Data Release>Fortnightly>Scheduled Bank's Statement of Position in India) and aggregate level monthly data on sectoral deployment of bank credit for December 2023, reported by select major banks, were also released on the website (Home>Statistics>Data Releases>Monthly> Data on Sectoral Deployment of Bank Credit).

² Previous data release in the series, covering end-September 2023 position, was published on December 1, 2023 on RBI website.

³ Population group criteria used for BSR is based on population size of respective revenue centre, as per census 2011, where branches of SCBs are operating and classified as: a) 'Rural' (population less than 10,000), b) 'Semi-urban' (population of 10,000 to less than 1 lakh), c) 'Urban' (population of 1 lakh to less than 10 lakhs), d) 'Metropolitan' (population of 10 lakhs and above).

⁴ Reference date for BSR-1 is last day of the quarter. These data include the impact of merger of a non-bank with a bank with effect from July 1, 2023.