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Kadambi Narahari in Calcutta on Thursday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury
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Calcutta, Sept. 13: SBI Card — a joint venture between the State Bank of India and GE Capital — is optimistic about a growth in annual spending through credit cards and a fall in delinquency (non-recovery) levels as it looks to sell 5,75,000 cards this fiscal.
At present, India has a credit card base of about 18.3 million, and spending during 2011-12 stood at Rs 96,614 crore. Of this, SBI Cards has a base of 2.3 million cards, comprising 9 per cent of the annual spending.
“Penetration in the credit card market is quite low in India. There is a huge potential for growth. We are anticipating the annual spending to grow to Rs 120,000 crore in the current year and we are hoping to retain 9 per cent level of the total annual spending,” Kadambi Narahari, chief executive officer of SBI Card, said here today.
The upcoming festive season will spur spending, he added.
The company is looking to add 1 million cards by 2014-15.
Narahari said delinquency levels of the company stood at 4.9 per cent, while it had improved to about 5 per cent for the sector.
“Customers are becoming more financially savvy these days. They know exactly what they want and plan their spending.”
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