After remaining under severe strain for several quarters, gold loan firms have now turned the corner and are moving into a moderate growth.

Gold industry experts are of the view that there are nowhere near the golden days that they enjoyed before the Reserve Bank of India's move to crack a whip on them, but the industry is now expected to regain moderate growth.

Gold loan firm Muthoot Finance, which mostly lends money against gold to traders, salaried individuals, farmers, traders and small businessmen, managed to pocket an impressive
27 per cent jump in net profit in the first half of current year.

Manappuram Finance, which is also a gold loan firm, reported a jump of 9 per cent in net profit in the first six months of this year.

V P Nandkumar, Chief executive & managing director of Manappuram Finance, said, "Now that the stresses and uncertainties of the past few months have eased, we feel we have turned the corner and moved into a phase of recovery and moderate growth."

Nandkumar added that they were expecting a loan book growth of around 10 per cent by the end of current financial year.

Muthoot Finance expects a growth of 5-10 per cent in AUM (assets under management) by the end of current fiscal year.

However, the projected growth rates are in wide contrast to an average 85 per cent growth that the industry enjoyed in the past two years.