The CEO and Managing Director of the country's largest private lender, Ms Chanda Kochhar said that the rates were likely to remain same till the end of this financial year.

On the sidelines of a conference on World Economic forum, the CEO said that "As of now, interest rates should stay stable for some time, at least till March."

Talking about credit offtake she said that the demand in credit had improved. Home loans and auto loans, in particular, had shown a lot of improvement. She revealed that the bank was concentrating on home and auto loans, besides corporate loans for project financing which was not growing that fast.

She also said that corporate were talking about financial closure of up to $250 billion in infrastructure and project loans between the present time and 2012. she said that the bank would see more of this in the next 4-5 months.

ICICI plans to contract its retail loan book from the current 6 percent to 5 percent by March 2010. The quantum of bad loans has been a major concern for the bank. the bank's NPA figure was at its highest. The banks gross bad debts increased to 4.7 percent of total loans during the July-September quarter from 4.2 percent in the preceding quarter.