“In a country where household gold holdings are significant, the rapid growth of gold loans is enabling households to convert a traditionally held asset into a source of accessible finance. This is supporting greater financial inclusion while enabling consumers to meet a wide range of personal and livelihood needs,” said Manish Jain, Country Managing Director of Experian India.

The growth story is also becoming increasingly broad-based across the country.

While Southern India continues to remain an important market for gold loans, strong sourcing growth in FY26 was seen in states such as Uttar Pradesh (138%), West Bengal (112%), Rajasthan (105%) and Maharashtra (102%), highlighting growing acceptance of gold-backed lending beyond its traditional regional concentration and indicating a broader pan-India expansion trend, Experian said.

There is evidence that gold loans are becoming an increasingly important gateway to formal credit for a wider spectrum of consumers.

By unlocking the value of household gold, priority sector gold loans are helping convert dormant assets into productive capital, especially supporting women-led households, micro-enterprises, livelihood generation and greater participation in the formal financial ecosystem.

While companies have not yet reported any signs of stress in the segment, the practice of rolling over gold loans by making partial payments to extend the tenure and reset the loan period has become widespread. However, latest RBI guidelines have placed strict limits on such rollovers.

Borrowers are now required to repay bullet loans within 12 months fully, and lenders are barred from “evergreening” loans by repeatedly extending the tenure without conducting fresh appraisals, said an industry player.

Muthoot Finance, the largest player in the segment, reported Rs 1.65 lakh crore in gold loans and 196 tonnes of gold held as security from customers in FY2026.

The industry portfolio, including banks, also expanded substantially from Rs 6.3 lakh crore in March 2023 to Rs.19.4 lakh crore by March 2026, reflecting sustained momentum across the category.

Retail loans accounted for the biggest share in non-banks’ loans at 43%, with gold loans, which are part of retail loans, making up 5.6% of all loans as at the end of May. Loans to industry had a share of 37.4%, with that of services at 13%.

Real estate loans spurt by 40.2%

Commercial real estate has emerged as one of the fastest-growing mainstream categories in credit growth in the NBFCs sector, with outstanding credit to the segment surging 40.2% year-on-year to Rs 1.196 lakh crore in May 2026 from Rs 85,317 crore a year ago, significantly outpacing the 10.2% growth recorded in May 2025, data released by the RBI on Tuesday shows.

The sharp rise suggests stronger financing activity for commercial property projects amid improving demand in office, warehousing and mixed-use developments.

The spike has also raised concern as credit to commercial real estate is considered as a risky segment along with unsecured retail lending and microfinance lending, according to an official of a nationalised bank.

Overall, NBFCs, including housing finance companies (HFCs), continued to expand credit at a healthy pace in May 2026, with outstanding loans rising 14.2% to Rs 58.61 lakh crore from Rs 51.32 lakh crore a year earlier, RBI data shows.

Bank credit to NBFCs rose 33.7% year-on-year to around Rs 20.88 lakh crore by May 2026. This has improved NBFCs’ ability to extend loans to sectors where they have enjoyed a competitive edge, including commercial real estate.

NBFC credit growth to industry also moderated with outstanding industrial credit rising by just 7.3% year-on-year to Rs 21.89 lakh crore in May 2026, compared with 10% growth in May 2025.

Infrastructure, which constitutes the bulk of industrial lending, expanded by 5.8%, down from 9.3% a year earlier. Lending to the power sector also slowed, recording 5.8% growth compared with 13% in the previous year, according to the RBI.

Consumer durables loans rise 42%

Retail loans remained the largest driver of NBFC credit expansion. Outstanding retail credit increased 19.5% to Rs 25.20 lakh crore in May 2026, compared with Rs 21.09 lakh crore in May 2025.

Within retail lending, consumer durables loans by NBFCs posted robust growth of 42% to Rs 68,814 crore, more than doubling the 20.6% growth recorded a year earlier. The increase points to resilient discretionary consumption and greater reliance on NBFC financing for household purchases, according to analysts.

Housing finance also registered steady expansion.

Housing loans, including those extended by HFCs, rose 10.9% year-on-year to Rs 8.35 lakh crore in May 2026, improving from 5.1% growth in May 2025, RBI says. The segment continued to account for a substantial share of retail credit, supported by sustained demand in the residential property market.

RBI says agriculture and allied activities witnessed a notable acceleration in credit growth. Outstanding loans to the sector increased 17.9% to Rs 80,325 crore in May 2026 from Rs 68,127 crore a year earlier.

This compares with a modest 5% expansion recorded in May 2025, indicating stronger credit flow to rural and farm-related activities.

Credit to the services sector also maintained healthy momentum. Outstanding loans rose 16.7% year-on-year to Rs 7.60 lakh crore, lower than the 23.9% growth seen in May 2025 but still reflecting broad-based demand.

Overall, the latest data indicate that NBFC credit growth has become increasingly driven by retail consumption, housing finance and commercial real estate, while industrial lending has lost some momentum.

These measures were inferred as heralding the government’s intent to prepare the vehicular and fuel ecosystems for the next stage of ethanol adoption, with the specific proposal to go beyond E20 stoking concern among both car makers and motorists.

But even before this, the rapid upshift or advancing of the transition to E20 by five years has left a section of consumers complaining about a perceptible drop in fuel economy. They have also expressed concerns over vehicular part damage in older cars, especially as ethanol content progressively goes up.

In the backdrop of such sentiments, a meeting at the most senior levels of the government last week is learnt to have advised about the need to scientifically address some of the genuine concerns. This included an effort to ask OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to address the consumer complaints. Officials also said some of which are inferred to be “overblown”.

The sources said the government reckons the need to give sufficient time for ecosystem readiness and why they must avoid pushing through the transition to the E25 fuel, especially in the context of the rushed E20 transition earlier.

“There is a view (within the government) that the transition beyond E20 will need to be spaced out. That is the sense we have got from vehicle manufacturers too. The idea is to go to E25 in a calibrated, graded manner for existing vehicles,” a senior government official told The Indian Express.

It is, however, the transition to the E25 fuels that has players in the vehicular ecosystem worried, especially given how rushed the E10 to E20 transition was. For older vehicles and those certified for E10 petrol, this transition came about rather quickly, without sufficient warnings of the consumer-end pitfalls. The experience left motorists, especially those owning older cars and two-wheelers, feeling somewhat short-changed.

Using a higher ethanol blend in petrol for engines, especially those not designed for these blends, results in a drop in fuel economy depending on when the car was manufactured. Older vehicles fare comparatively worse in this transition. While a fuel with 10% ethanol (E10) made little difference to a car’s performance, the transition to E20 did impact the operational parameters of older vehicles. And the worsening of the performance does not exactly progress in a linear fashion as the blending levels keep increasing.

Ethanol has lower calorific value than petrol, which results in a perceptible drop in mileage. Also, regular petrol cars running on higher ethanol blends, alongside the drop in mileage, are harder to start on winter mornings because ethanol burns at a higher temperature than petrol. The concern that auto companies have expressed is that filling E25 fuel in internal combustion engine vehicles, especially older ones, could see some damage to parts owing to factors like corrosion, given ethanol’s hygroscopic nature that promotes water uptake.

Ethanol also has its positives, including a higher octane number (or the fuel’s ability to withstand premature combustion due to compression). Plus, higher blending is more eco-friendly given ethanol’s lower carbon content and cuts down on fuel imports. Multiple carmakers in India told The Indian Express that they have now begun working on engines with higher compression ratios to extract the maximum mileage out of higher ethanol blends, but that is all for the future. The transition to E25 is something that vehicle owners privately admit to be concerned about, especially if this is rushed through. On its part, the government continues to maintain that the roll-out of higher ethanol-petrol blends will only be done after proper testing and stakeholder consultations.

The proposed E25 transition requires automakers to do additional engineering and validation work around engine calibration, fuel-system durability, corrosion resistance, and material compatibility. And homologation — the process that officially certifies a vehicle or component as compliant with regulations pertaining to safety, environment, and road-worthiness — at the end. All this needs time, which could be impacted if the transition is a rushed affair.

The total number of informal workers in India in 2025 was 12.81 crore.

Together, these six cities account for 40% of all informal workers in the country’s 46 cities with more than a million people each.

Of the 1.98 crore informal workers in these 46 cities, roughly 26% — or 52 lakh — were women. Greater Visakhapatnam had the highest percentage of female workers at 42.5%, with Surat close behind at 41.4%. Srinagar was last at 10.5%, just below Varanasi at 12.1%. The report on the unincorporated enterprises in million-plus cities is the second such report released by MoSPI on India’s biggest cities. The first was on their labour market dynamics, based on the results of the Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2025.

“This report presents, for the first time, a comprehensive statistical profile of 46 million-plus cities,” Geeta Singh Rathore, Director General of MoSPI’s National Sample Survey, said. She added that since the estimates are based on sample survey data, “differences observed across cities may arise from variations in economic structure, industrial composition, local conditions and sampling variability”.

The city-level estimates are generated from MoSPI’s Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) for 2025, which covers India’s unincorporated, non-agricultural enterprises, excluding construction. These enterprises make up a sizable portion of the economy and include the likes of small manufacturers, service providers, and trading units.

Spread of cities
The 46 million-plus cities account for about 13% of establishments, 16% of workers, and 21% of Gross Value Added (GVA) of the unincorporated non-agricultural sector as per the ASUSE 2025 survey. These 46 cities are from 17 states and Union Territories: 10 from Maharashtra, seven from Uttar Pradesh, four each from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, three each from Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, two each from Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Punjab, and West Bengal, and one apiece from Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, and Telangana.

As The Indian Express had reported earlier this year in March, the number of informal establishments in the entire country rose by 58.5 lakh in 2025 to 7.92 crore, down from an increase of 83.5 lakh in 2023-24 (October-September). As a result, fewer jobs were created: 74.5 lakh in 2025 compared to 1.1 crore in the 12 months ended September 2024. Informal sector pay rose by just 3.9% in 2025, less than half the 13% increase seen in 2023-24.

Pay and productivity
In terms of total pay, emolument per worker was the highest in Jaipur, at Rs 2.33 lakh — although this only considers those unincorporated establishments with hired workers. Greater Hyderabad was second, at Rs 2.14 lakh. Emoluments refers to the total compensation a worker receives, inclusive of salary and benefits.

Meanwhile, informal enterprises in Gwalior paid hired workers the least at Rs 88,853, with Varanasi second from bottom at Rs 1 lakh. On average, emolument per worker in the 46 cities was Rs 1.5 lakh per year.

With the government releasing details for the 46 million-plus cities for the first time, comparative data on wages and the number of informal jobs is unavailable. Consequently, there is no way to calculate how much wages increased in 2025.

While informal workers in Jaipur got paid the most, they were not the most productive; that title belonged to Pimpri-Chinchwad, where the GVA per worker stood at Rs 2.9 lakh – significantly higher than Jaipur, which ranked 13th at Rs 2.23 lakh.

Once again, Gwalior ranked last, with a GVA per worker of just Rs 98,273. Unsurprisingly, informal firms in Gwalior were the least productive of the 46 million-plus cities, with the GVA per establishment amounting to just Rs 1.78 lakh per year — less than a quarter of the city ranked first — Faridabad — where each establishment’s GVA was Rs 7.75 lakh.

Faridabad also employed 2.98 workers per unincorporated enterprise — the highest in the country. This was more than twice as high as Greater Visakhapatnam, where only 1.45 people were employed per informal establishment. The average for the 46 cities is 1.96.