The institution's sanctions, which stood at Rs 17,050 crore in 1996-97, leaped to Rs 24,097 crore in 1997-98, while disbursals rose to Rs 15,119 crore from Rs 11,439 crore.

"The infrastructure sector has stolen the show, accounting for 32 per cent of the total sanctions. We will maintain the same growth rate in infrastructure financing in the current fiscal too," IDBI chairman SH Khan said.

According to Khan, in addition to the power and telecom sectors, many port and road projects will take off in 1998-99. IDBI will, however, restrict its exposure to the infrastructure sector at around the same (32 per cent) level. The short-term working capital loans account for about 11 percent of the total disbursals during the year against a 15 per cent target, Khan said. The assistance under short-term and working capital facilities during the year amounted to Rs 2,589 crore.

IDBI raised funds to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore during the 1997-98 fiscal. Of this, rupee borrowings aggregated over Rs 13,000 crore through a mix of public and private placement of bonds, certificates of deposit and fixed deposits. Foreign currency raised during the year, including drawals under the existing lines of credit, were in the region of Rs 2,000 crore.

Sanctions to the infrastructure sector -- power and telecom -- aggregated Rs 6,664 crore, while those relating to roads and ports aggregated Rs 1,001 crore in 1997-98. Assistance to these four areas of infrastructure constituted 31.8 per cent of total sanctions, according to the provisional data released by the term-lending institution on Tuesday.

Overall sanctions under project finance recorded a growth of 32 per cent during the year as against 3.7 percent in 1996-97. In absolute terms, sanctions under project finance were to the tune of Rs 14,935 crore last fiscal, up from Rs 11,000 crore in 1996-97. Foreign currency loan sanctions to projects grew at a faster pace of 58.6 per cent to Rs 3,141 crore relative to rupee loan which increased by 49 per cent to Rs 7,968 crore.

Most forex loan sanctions were made during the first three quarters of the year, after which the demand for such loans came down in the wake of the currency fluctuations experienced since December 1997, the IDBI release said. Underwriting assistance came down by 77 per cent to Rs 71 crore during the year as most of the projects placed less reliance on public issues for raising equity capital due to the continued sluggishness in the primary segment of the domestic capital market.