The largest private sector lender of the country, ICICI Bank has indicated that its credit growth will account to around 18% in this financial year. This indication comes keeping in light the mere 1.8% growth which the bank saw in the first half of this fiscal.

"Last quarter (July-September) was the first quarter after nine quarters that the decline in retail business was arrested...our domestic corporate sector business has grown at an annualised rate of 30 per cent in the last quarter. So that growth would sustain," ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar said.

The lender had booked 19% growth in profits in Q2 this fiscal amounting to Rs 1,236.27 crore.

"From here, what will happen is that our retail business will start growing...international growing at single digit and corporate sector growing at much healthier rate. I still expect that for the year as a whole we should end with 18 per cent growth rate," Kochhar said.

Retail portfolio of the bank is taking a pick, said Kochhar adding, "In a way second quarter was beginning of the growth, so to say. While the number itself look small, if you break it into segment wise this number came about in spite of the fact the retail business had not grown and the international business was growing at a very moderate level."

Kochhar said, "I see a lot of positive trends for ICICI Bank from here on because for us the peak of NPAs is behind us and we reached very healthy level of CASA (current accounts savings accounts) deposits. We have started growing assets from here and our provisioning costs are coming down."

Speaking about interest rates, she said, "there is an upward bias on interest rate. How they move up... to what extent they move up and at what rate they move up... will partly depend on how credit growth rate in the system picks up."

"Clearly, the fact is that the liquidity is being managed tightly. The fact is that deposit cost have gone up and therefore as credit demand picks up there would be upward bias on interest rate," she said.