Punjab National Bank, the country’s third-largest state-owned lender, remains bullish on corporate loans, even as it looks to grow its retail, agri, and MSME portfolio (RAM) to 60% of the loan book.
“We have set the priority of growing the RAM portfolio, which is currently at 56% of the overall advances, to 60%. The contribution of the corporate portfolio will be 40%,” said Ashok Chandra, managing director and CEO, Punjab National Bank, in an interview to Business Today.
The bank is targeting 11%-12% credit growth in FY26. The bank’s domestic advances grew 9.6% year on year to Rs 10.79 crore by June 30, 2025. Of this RAM advances grew 11.8% year on year, while corporate and other advances grew by 6.9% year on year.
Chandra noted that one of the reasons why corporate credit growth for PNB has slowed was that the lender had sold some low-yielding advances. The bank has otherwise sanctioned Rs 1.29 lakh crore of corporate loans, which are in various stages of disbursement.
“If this much book is available, and these are all sanctioned, documentations have happened, I am expecting that disbursement will happen in a phased manner, and from the second and third quarter onwards, we will see the disbursements taking place,” he said.
He also underlined that the bank is very aggressive in corporate lending has also given confidence to corporate borrowers that decisions will be taken within a time period of 15 days. “Anything which comes to head office, within 15 days, we are going to communicate the decision. This has given a lot of confidence to the corporates,” he said.
PNB has sanctioned loans in sectors including renewable, road projects, particularly in the Hybrid Annuity Model, InvIts or infrastructure investment trusts, food processing and compressed biogas.
