"In fact, the sanction made by the executive committee of the bank has grown by Rs 9,000 crore between April 2 and October 23 against a growth of Rs 6,000 crore in the same period of the previous year. This means that sanctions approved by the EC alone have gone up Rs 3,000 crore," Verma said.

He also said the 2 per cent negative credit growth reported in the second quarter of this year has already been made up inthe first three weeks of October. "We will stick to our target of 16 per cent growth in credit for the entire fiscal despite the negative growth in the first half. "With the type of infrastructure borrowing at hand, we are confident of the 16 per cent target," Verma said.

"A large number of power projects in Madhya Pradesh is on the verge of announcing financial closure. If not for the forthcoming state elections, they would have announced the financial closure by now," he said. Similarly, many power projects in Tamil Nadu are also about to achieve financial closure. He also counted some road projects and telecom projects in advanced stages of financial closure.

Verma, however, said the maximum disbursals that he is expecting on the infrastructure sector this year will be Rs 1,500-2,000 crore. "We are keen to limit our exposure to any one sector within the 15 per cent exposure cap that we have set for the purpose of prudence. He is counting on larger non-fund based exposure to the sector," hesaid.

Apart from infrastructure disbursals, Verma expects higher growths in credit to come from the retail segments like housing finance and consumer finance. "We may even cross the Rs 500-crore target set for the housing finance segment," he said.

A large portion of the sanctions already made will also come up for disbursals in the second half. The credit offtake in the second half is traditionally very high.