German Development Bank

State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday said it will sign 70 million euro (about Rs 630 crore) Line of Credit (LoC) with German Development Bank KfW for promoting solar project in the country. The agreement will be signed on December 14 at the bank's IFSC Gift City Branch in Ahmedabad, SBI said in a regulatory filing. The LoC is aimed at supporting Solar Photovoltaics (PV) projects in India, it said. The country's largest lender SBI reported a 9.13 per cent growth in consolidated net profit for the September quarter to Rs 16,099.58 crore as against Rs 14,752 crore in the year-ago period. On a standalone basis, it posted a net profit of Rs 14,330.02 crore as against Rs 13,264.52 crore in the year-ago period. The bank reported a total income of over Rs 1.12 lakh crore for the quarter under review, up from Rs 88,733 crore in the year-ago period.

In addition to the $277 million dollar loan facility, KfW will also extend a grant of 1.5 million euros to SBI as a technical assistance package.

> The German -government-owned development bank, KfW has churned its India funding strategy. It is phasing out it its commitments for the support of the financial sector in India and shifting its priorities to funding sustainable urban development. Over the last ten years KfW had three focus sectors in India: energy, environment and natural resources, and financial systems or sustainable economic development. Last year, there was a shift in focus areas, which will result in an increasing role of sustainable urban development within Indo-German bilateral development cooperation, according to a senior official at KfW. This is in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's focus on urban development under the Smart City project. 'We were working a lot with development banks in India, helping them set the banking structures. We were doing a lot for SME support, basically providing credit lines to development banks, which they passed on to the SMEs. We see that Indian banking sector ...