ICICI extends festive loan offer to meet target

From The Business Standard ICICI Bank, the largest retail lender in the country, has extended its festive offer of low interest rates on retail loans in order to meet its target of 20 per cent retail credit growth in 2007-08, down from around 40 per cent growth recorded in the past two years.

“We are still closely watching the competition. The programme (festive loan offers) is still on,” said V Vaidyanathan, executive director, ICICI Bank.

The bank had first said on October 10 that the offers would be on till the end of October and then extended it till Diwali.

The bank has not set any deadline for the offer, unlike competitor State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank, whose low interest rate offer will end in December.

ICICI Bank’s retail advances grew by 22 per cent by September-end. Incremental growth in retail advances was about 13 per cent at Rs 9,000 crore.

ICICI Bank’s advances portfolio increased by 33 per cent to Rs 2,07,121 crore in the same period, while the advances of the bank’s international branches increased 146 per cent to Rs 36,994 crore.

Vaidyanathan, speaking on the sidelines of an SME seminar, said, “In the third and fourth quarters, we expect credit to pick up. Retail book should grow at 20 per cent. Corporate is doing very well in India.”

He said ICICI Bank added about 1 million SME customers in the last four-five years. The SMEs financed by the bank are growing faster than many large corporates.

The bank’s efforts at extending reach to the small and medium enterprises segment led to its SME advances book increasing by 56 per cent to Rs 5,205 crore as on September 30, 2007 from Rs 3,326 crore a year earlier.