Sanctions and disbursements by investment institutions (LIC, UTI, GIC and its subsidiaries) increased by 20 per cent and 19.3 per cent respectively during the same period.

The sanctions moved up substantially during the year due to large commitments to the infrastructure sector. "The accelerated growth in financial assistance sanctioned during 1997-98 was due largely to sharp increases in sanctions in respect of infrastructure projects. The combined financial assistance sanctioned and disbursed by the three major term-lending institutions (IDBI, ICICI and IFCI) for infrastructure projects during 1997-98 increased by 217 per cent and 109.7 per cent respectively," said the report.

For the first time, the shareof ICICI in the total financial assistance sanctioned and disbursed moved ahead of its big brother, IDBI. The share of of IDBI and IFCI in the share of financial assistance disbursed has come down during the period 1995-96 to 1997-98, while that of ICICI has increased from 31.8 per cent in 1995-96 to 43.2 per cent in 1997-98. The disbursements of these three institutions constituted 70.6 per cent of the total disbursements in 1997-98 as against 68.8 per cent in 1996-97 and 60.9 per cent in 1995-96.

ICICI outperformed the other two financial institutions on other counts of efficiency of operations like income from operations, other income, total income, profit before tax and profit after tax, said the RBI report. In terms of growth of financial assets, banks grew faster than the financial institutions in 1997-98. The financial assets of the institutions registered a lower growth of 13.6 per cent in 1997-98 as against a rise of 16.5 per cent in 1996-97. The financial assets of banks, on the other hand, grewto 15.9 per cent compared with a rise of 11 per cent during previous year. As a result the share of financial institutions in aggregate financial assets showed a marginal decline to 36 per cent in 1997-98 from 36.4 per cent in 1996-97.

On the resources front, the share of `other resources' on the sources of funding for the financial institutions increased to 20.7 per cent from 13.3 per cent, while the share of internal resources came down from 42.2 per cent in 1996-97 to 37.4 per cent in 1997-98. The share of external resources also came down from 44.5 per cent in 1996-97 to 37.4 per cent in 1997-98.

During 1997-98, all the three financial institutions together mobilised Rs 24,384.4 crore by way of issue of bonds and debentures, an increase of 35 per cent against Rs 18,064.3 crore during the previous year. According to the report, the net NPAs of most institutions came down in 1997-98. IFCI has the highest NPA of 13.6 per cent of total advances among the financial institutions as against 13.9 per cent inthe previous year. IDBI has a net NPA of 10.1 per cent in 1997-98 against 10.3 per cent the previous year and ICICI's stood at 7.7 per cent against the previous 7.8 per cent. The NPA of Exim Bank is available for the first time and is at a very high 14.5 per cent, while Nabard's NPA alone has shown an increase to 1.5 per cent from 0.9 per cent.