Banks lack skills to lend to emerging areas: SBI chief

MUMBAI: SBI chairman C S Setty said that even after years of lending to infrastructure, banks lack expertise in advances to emerging areas like green energy and battery storage.
He added that after excesses in corporate lending caused a surge in NPAs, banks have been compelled to go after personal loans because a lack of formalisation has made it difficult to lend to small businesses and retail.
"While we expect much of the capital to come from overseas and support domestic capital formation, universal banks - particularly large ones like SBI - are expected to play a role in infrastructure financing. Despite our years of expertise in project financing, the skill set required to assess emerging areas is still lacking. One idea is to establish a center of excellence focused on these areas, in collaboration with multilateral development banks and large MNC banks. We are working on that," said Setty.