New
Delhi: Finance minister P Chidambaram has asked state-owned
banks to hold interest rate on home loans at the current
rate and rebalance their loans to moderate credit growth
to some sectors of the economy.
The
FM said that all public sector banks had agreed to hold
interest rate on home loans at the current rate. Home
loans cost around 9-10 per cent (floating) and 11 per
cent (fixed), with rates and tenure varying across banks.
Referring
to recent monetary measures announced by the RBI, Chidambaram
said banks have been asked to rebalance their loans to
comply with the increased provisioning of capital by the
bank regulator for loans on credit card, for buying shares,
commercial real estate and borrowings from non-banking
finance companies.
Chidambaram
said that he was satisfied with the performance of banks
and said bank advances had grown by 22.5 per cent during
the third quarter this fiscal on year-on-year basis, and
credit by 30.2 per cent.
On
bank credit to the farm sector, Chidambaram said the government
was confident of crossing the target of Rs175,000 crore
lending to farm sector for this fiscal.
The
bank credit to agriculture sector, he said, has increased
by 28.4 per cent during the third quarter this fiscal
and Rs149,343 crore were outstanding in the farm sector.
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