Privately-owned ICICI has identified infrastructure as a key sector for its growth. The bank expects financial closure of projects amounting to Rs 150,000 crore in the next three to four months. Expressing an optimistic view concerning infra projects at the sidelines of the seminar on micro, small and medium sized enterprises(MSMEs), the CEO and Managing director of the bank, Chanda Kochhar said "A lot of activities have come back in terms of re-starting projects. The fact that the projects are coming to financial closure indicates the sector will grow." However, Kochhar said that the closure of core financial projects might not reflect in credit growth immediately since these were long term projects and their disbursement would take time. The bank has approximately a million MSME customers. Kocchar said that the MSME portfolio in terms of lending was about 12,000 crore. The banks MSME loan is growing and would continue to grow, she added. Kocchar refused to reveal the expected growth figure for the sector but said that the bank sees market share in MSME sector improving. She said that the bank was looking for specific strategies and specific products for various MSME segments. In a recent move to mitigate losses on its credit card portfolio, ICICI announced that it would block all the credit cards in case of a default on a single one. |