Statsguru: Bank lending in the slow lane amid Covid-19 pandemic

The half-yearly Financial Stability Report released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week shows how bank lending evolved during the tumultuous year gone by. This assumes importance especially when credit growth is slowing down in the commercial banking universe.

Chart 1 shows the quarter-on-quarter growth in credit by public and private banks to two complementary sets of borrowers: Public sector undertakings (PSUs), and non-PSUs, or private companies. In a period of slowing credit growth, only PSUs have sequentially borrowed more, and that too, only from private banks. The report highlighted the dissonance between the resilience and the falling