New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced a Covid-19 healthcare package of Rs 50,000 crore for fund-seeking vaccine makers, medical equipment suppliers, hospitals, and patients, as it opened up another round of restructuring of loans for individual and small borrowers for up to two years.
The central bank governor Shaktikanta Das said loans, which can be given until March 31, 2022, by banks will be classified as priority sector loans with a softer loan rate for three years or repayment whichever is earlier.
Banks can put their surplus liquidity worth the loans they give under the scheme with the RBI, using a special liquidity window earning reverse repo rate plus 40 basis points. This will work as an incentive for banks to expand their loan books, he said.
Individual borrowers and small businesses with loan outstanding of up to Rs 25 crore, and who did not avail of a moratorium or restructuring relief last year, can ask for restructuring of their loans for up to 2 years. The window remains to open up to 30 September, and banks will have to do the restructuring within 90 days of getting the request.
Those who availed of the facility last year but banks allowed the restructuring of fewer than two years can now avail the facility and tell banks to increase the residual repayment window to up to two years in total, he added.
The RBI will also have a special long-term repo operation window for small finance banks, whereby the banks can borrow funds up to Rs 10,000 crore at repo rate for deploying for fresh loans SFBs, to be deployed for fresh lending of up to Rs 10 lakh per borrower.
Also, the central bank extended some measures taken last year for banks and other entities to help during the pandemic. “The immediate objective is to preserve human life and restore livelihoods through all means possible,” Das said.
“At the RBI, we stand in battle readiness to ensure that financial conditions remain congenial and markets continue to work efficiently. We will work in close coordination with the Government to ameliorate the extreme travails that our citizens are undergoing in this hour of distress. We are committed to going unconventional and devise new responses as and when the situation demands,” the Governor added.
(VP)