Middle income customers to help HDFC get 18-20% growth

The Reserve Bank of India's credit policy meet on January 24 is largely touted to cut interest rates by 25 basis points. The apex bank has raised interest rates 13 times since March 2010 in its bid to control headline inflation that has been unwavering above 9% for a year.

Mortgage lender HDFC 's vice chairman & CEO Keki Mistry understands that people are worried about high interest rates and its impact on home loan borrowers. Even though people believe that because of high interest rates there will be a significant slowdown in housing, he hasn't seen that.

"The primary reason why we haven't seen that is because we cater to middle income customers," says Mistry.

He concedes that a few big cities are seeing a slowdown but for them growth remains strong. "Middle income people are still not impacted, jobs are intact, business sentiment may be weak but at the grassroots level one hasn't seen a slowdown," he adds.

Irrespective of domestic growth concerns put forward by other lenders, Mistry is confident they won't have to scale down their loan growth forecast. "I have always talked of growth of between 18-20% and we are reasonably confident that we will get 18-20% growth in a year."