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Journalism of Courage
In response to soft monetary stance of the Reserve Bank, three public sector lenders — Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda and Dena Bank — today announced a reduction in their benchmark lending rates by up to 75 basis points with effect from January 1.
After the cut, PNB’s benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR) now stands reduced at 12 per cent. The lender has also effected a 0.25-1.25 per cent reduction in its deposit rates across various maturities. Interest rate for deposits having 1-3 year maturity has been revised downwards to 8.5 per cent from 9.5 per cent while those having a 3-10 year tenure will attract an interest rate of 8.25 per cent.
“Today’s rate cuts (of PNB) are to ensure that our measures are in tandem with the economy, from high interest rate to low interest rate regime,” PNB’s chairman and managing director K C Chakrabarty told reporters here.
PNB’s rate has come shortly after India’s largest lender, State Bank of India reduced its PLR by 0.75 per cent and deposit rates by upto one per cent early this month. The reduction in lending rates would be applicable to all PLR-related loans in agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises and retail sector, Chakrabarty said. Further, the bank has also revised floating rates for housing and car loans by 0.5 per cent.
The bank would also implement the special home loan package announced jointly by the public-sector banks recently for all new loans approved between January 1 and June 30, Chakrabarty said.
Customers of the country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank would also get a new year gift in the form of a cut in interest rates, its CEO and managing director K V Kamath said today. “We are looking at cutting interest rates very early in January for our housing and other loan customers,” Kamath told PTI over telephone from Mumbai. “The lowering of interest rate would be in new year,” he said when asked if the bank was all set to give a new year gift to its customers. The extent of the rate cut was being calibrated and would be announced soon, he said when asked if the rate could be more than 100 basis points.
