India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank on Tuesday said it can mobilise up to USD 75 billion in the next three to five years to meet the growing economy’s credit requirement by leveraging the bank’s just concluded USD 5 billion public offer.

“Banking is all (about) leveraging… we just now concluded the five billion dollar public offer… this can help us raise funds from borrowing in the ratio of one to 10,” ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO K V Kamath told PTI.

This coupled with internal generation could help us generate funds between USD 50 to 75 billion that could be used for the credit needs of the country, about whose sustainable high growth the banker was bullish.

Kamath, however, declined to comment on any of the bank’s financial plans and borrowing details.

Within a month of its successful equity offer in domestic and international market, the bank today closed a syndicated loan of USD 1.5 billion (in yen denomination), which is the largest ever such borrowing by an Indian financial institution.

ICICI had raised about USD 6.5 billion in the previous financial year to meet the growing credit requirements.

On the issue of further hitting the equity market, Kamath said that the bank has no plans to go for this route for at least three years and that the bank was in a comfortable position to meet the credit demand put up by the fast growing economy.

“If the economy grows at a high pace, which I have no doubt about it, then the banking services sector also grows… in case the economy grows by about 10 per cent annually, the financial services sector will grow by 25-30 per cent.

“This would mean doubling the size of the institution in three years,” he quipped.

Kamath said that the follow-up equity issue had given the bank sufficient flexibility to meet the immediate credit requirement of its insurance and mutual fund business, for which ICICI has sought permission from the Reserve Bank to create a holding company.

“There are hardly any issues on the subject… as a regulator RBI (has) got to satisfy itself,” he said when asked about the reports of sharp differences between ICICI and the apex bank.

Attributing the ongoing controversy to the media hype generated on the subject, Kamath said that RBI has recently issued a discussion paper on the issue and “we would submit our views in due course.”