Mumbai, Dec 29 (PTI) The growth in fresh personal loan disbursals declined to 18.6 per cent in November compared to 19.9 per cent in the year-ago period, mainly in the wake of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introducing punitive risk weighting for loans.

The moderation in personal loan disbursals was also due to a downward trend in fresh credit growth in the housing segment, the RBI said on Friday in its report on the sectoral deployment of bank credit for November.

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In terms of total outstanding, at the end of November, fresh personal loan disbursals stood at Rs 50,56,524 crore, compared to Rs 41,80,838 crore in the same period a year ago, as per the data.

However, the growth for the month of November this year fell to 18.6 per cent, as against 19.9 per cent recorded in November 2022.

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The latest data comprises loan deployment by 41 banks, which accounts for about 95 per cent of the total non-food credit deployment.

So far this financial year, personal loans grew 20.9 per cent, according to RBI data.

On an annualised basis, non-food bank credit growth also slowed to 16.3 per cent in November at Rs 1,56,20,554 crore, from 17.6 per cent a year ago.

Out of the total amount, growth of credit to industry halved to 6.1 per cent on-year in November 2023 to Rs 36,00,876 crore, from 13 per cent in November 2022.

Among the major industries, growth of credit to basic metal and metal products, food processing and textiles accelerated while that to all engineering, chemicals and chemical products and infrastructure decelerated.

However, growth of credit to agriculture and allied activities accelerated to 18.2 per cent on-year in the reporting month from 14 per cent a year ago.

Credit to the service sector grew 21.9 per cent in November this year, compared to 21.3 per cent a year ago.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)