Scheduled banks' April-June performance remain sluggish

The Reserve Bank of India released the quarterly performance report of scheduled commercial banks on Tuesday. 

The data in the report updated till June 24 this year, was based on a quarterly survey of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) along with regional rural banks (RRBs), and includes data on deposits and credit of these banks on the basis of states, districts, centres, population groups, and bank groups. 

The RBI data shows that the growth in aggregate deposits in the first quarter of FY17 was slower than in the same period last year. The aggregate deposits grew 9.2% on year compared to 10.6%. 

The deceleration in the growth of deposits was broad-based across all population groups, mainly contributed by the public sector banks. However, these banks continued to maintain their dominating position by accounting for 70% of total deposits, the RBI report said. 

Gross bank credit growth, however, was at 9.4%, higher than the 8.6% growth in extended credit in the same period last year. On year, in credit increased for State Bank of India (SBI) and its associates, private banks and Regional Rural Banks during the reference quarter as compared to their levels a year ago.

In June 2016, the number of reporting offices consistently increased in all sections such as rural (50,421 from 48531 of June 2015), semi-urban (36,056 versus 33929 of June 2015), urban (25,062 against 23803 in June 2015) and metropolitan (22475 from 21080 of June 2015). 

Have scheduled commercial banks' performance really improved? Here's an explanation via diagram 

Scheduled commercial banks' year-on-year performance.

According to the size of total business (deposits plus credit) of Scheduled Commercial Banks, seven states viz., Maharashtra, NCT of Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat accounted for 68% of the total business. Maharashtra alone contributed 25% of the total. These seven states together accounted for 66% of deposits and 72% of credit, at all-India level. 

At all-India level the credit deposit ratio of all the scheduled banks remained muted at 75.9% during this quarter.The ratio was the highest for Tamil Nadu (113.2%) followed by Chandigarh (104.3%), Andhra Pradesh (104.0%), Telangana (102.2%), Maharashtra (99.9%) and NCT of Delhi (91.6%) while the same for public sector banks was at 72.5%, it stood at more than 80% for private sector and foreign banks.

Scheduled commercial banks refer to those banks that are listed under the 2nd Schedule of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934. This includes private, foreign and even nationalised banks in the country. 

With the RBI recently permitting commercial banks to issue rupee bonds in overseas markets — known as Masala Bonds, both for their capital requirement and for financing infrastructure and affordable housing, would be a positive scenario for these banks