With the onset of the busy season, banks? non-food credit lent to companies and individuals, for the fortnight ended December 31, 2010, rose 24.14% year-on-year to Rs 36,97, 265 crore.

Such a growth is around 80 basis points higher than the growth of 23.40% y-o-y in the fortnight ended December 17, 2010, amounting to Rs 35,77,345 crore. In the third quarter ended in December 2010 banks lent around Rs 3,25,206 crore while they had lent only Rs 24,120 crore between second quarter ending September 2010, according to the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data.

There has been a 15.79% of credit growth in the first nine months of the fiscal.

RBI has projected a 20% loan growth for the banking industry in 2010-11. Banks lent an incremental Rs 1,19,920 crore(highest in any fortnight in 2010-11) during the fortnight ended December 31, 2010. Banks say, the credit growth is in expected lines and exude confidence in attaining 20% mark by March, 2011.

Meanwhile, deposit growth, which was sluggish so far, showed some signs of revival with as the y-o-y deposit growth rose 16.46% to Rs 4971390 crore as against 14.71% for the fortnight-ended December 17, 2010. Banks across the board have raised their deposit rates by 25-125 basis points during December ? January, 2010-11. In anticipation of another round of policy rate hikes in the range of 25-50 bps by RBI on January 25 in its third quarterly review of monetary and credit policy, banks may be deliberating another round of deposit rate hikes to boost deposit growth.

On Tuesday the bankers while meeting RBI had urged the central bank to reduce CRR and SLR to provide liquidity to the system to facilitate credit growth.