India Exim Bank Sees Loan Growth Of 12-15% In FY24

“Most of our business is overseas and the geopolitical situation is a little uncertain," said Harsha Bangari, managing director, India Exim Bank. “Based on this year’s performance, I am quite confident that we will be able to achieve our growth target."

Within this growth, Bangari said, the corporate book saw strong growth in FY23. The corporate book houses loans given to Indian companies and banks and grew 26% in 2022-23. “There was a bit of slowdown on the policy business side because of the geopolitical situation," she said.

The bank said it has a portfolio of 303 state-supported lines of credit, with commitments of $31.85 billion, at various stages of implementation. During FY23, the bank said it supported 37 new contracts worth over $1 billion.

In the current fiscal, India Exim Bank plans to raise around $4 billion in foreign currency resources. In FY23, it raised ₹52,156 crore, including foreign currency funds of $3.47 billion. While the bank’s loan book is dominated by foreign currency credit, the share of rupee loans has been rising over the past two years. The share of rupee loans rose from 20% in FY21, to 23% in FY22 and to 26% in FY23.

“Whatever rupee operations we have is in our commercial business and not in our policy business, which is fully dollar-based. When the commercial or the corporate book goes up, automatically the share of rupee loans also goes up," said Bangari.

She said that the bank would roughly operate in a foreign currency to rupee loan ratio of 80:20, but in the last couple of years it has changed a bit.

“It is a result of how fast each segment is growing. When India is seeing subdued growth while the global growth is faster, the policy business grows faster. When the domestic economy is doing well, we see the commercial book doing well," said Bangari.

The bank’s net profit in FY23 more than doubled to ₹1,556 crore and its customer asset portfolio rose 14% to ₹1.51 trillion.