Led by SBI group, PSBs dominate credits

State-owned lenders remain dominant players in India’s banking system with SBI group alone accounting for about a quarter of the market share both in the credits as well as the deposits arena. Public sector banks (PSBs) had 73.2 per cent and 73.9 per cent market share in credits and deposits respectively as of end March 2014, as per the latest report by the Reserve Bank.

It did not offer comparative figures for the previous 12 months in its ‘Basic statistical returns of commercial banks (BSR report), volume 43’. According to the BSR 2014 report, as of March 2014, gross outstanding credit of the system rose 13.7 per cent to Rs 62,82,082.43 crore in 2013-14. In the previous fiscal, it had registered an increase of 15 per cent. The deposits stood at Rs 79,55,721.22 crore, up 13.4 per cent in 2014 as against 15.4 per cent in 2013.

The BSR report said State Bank of India Group’s credit share stood at 22.1 per cent of the total at Rs 13,90,569.58 crore, while their deposit share stood at Rs 17,11,690.86 crore or 25.9 per cent as of March 2014. The share of credit market of other public sector banks as a whole stood at 51.1 per cent at Rs 32,07,506.54 crore and that of deposits at Rs 61,31,037.72 crore or 50 per cent, the RBI report showed.

Against this, private sector lenders’ credit market share stood at 19.4 per cent at Rs 12,21,334.14 crore while the deposits at 14,96,793.90 crore or 18.8 per cent. This shows that over a dozen private sector lenders together are smaller than the SBI Group on both the credit and deposit fronts. In contrast, 96 foreign banks, most of which are one branch set-ups with no retail presence, had credit share of 4.8 per cent of the system at Rs 3,03,790.29 crore and deposits pie at lower 4.3 per cent or Rs 3,66,127.2 crore. The regional rural banks’ had a credit share of 2.5 per cent at Rs 1,58,881.88 crore and that of deposits at 2.9 per cent at Rs 2,33,272.34 crore, the report showed. .

Rural and semi-urban centres registered higher deposit growth in 2014 at 17.5 per cent at Rs 79,13,443 crore and 16.5 per cent at Rs 69,34,280 crore respectively, compared to urban and metropolitan centres at 14.5 per cent and 11.6 per cent, respectively, the RBI report said. Despite this, it said, the number of borrowal accounts rose 8.2 per cent to 139 million in 2014 from 128 million in 2013, led by small borrowal accounts contributing to 78.7 per cent of the total number of such accounts in 2014. 

However, share of small borrowal accounts in outstanding credit declined to 8.4 per cent from 9.3 per cent in 2013. The number of deposit accounts increased to 1,227 million in 2014 from about 1,045 million in 2013 marking a growth of 17.4 per cent. Total number of savings bank accounts increased to 978 million in 2014 from 823 million in 2013. The national credit-deposit ratio rose to 79 per cent in the reporting year, up marginally from 78.8 per cent in 2013.

The report said, the average share of priority sector lending in total non-food-credit rose to 35.1 per cent in 2014 from Rs 33.7 per cent in the previous year. The data on the basic statistical returns of banks provides information on different dimensions of deposits and credit of the banking sector. The data on the basic statistical returns of banks provide information of different dimensions of deposits and credit of the banking sector. The information is collected from bank branches through basic statistical returns-1 & 2 (BSR-1&2), annually.

Under BSR-1, information on occupation/activity and organisational sector of the borrower, type of account, interest rate, credit limit and outstanding amount are collected for each loan account, while under BSR-2, branch- wise data on type of deposits, maturity pattern of term deposits and number of employees are collected.