4 banks cut PLR by 25-50 bps

Two weeks after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced its last set of monetary measures, four public sector lenders – Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), Allahabad Bank, Uco Bank and United Bank of India (UBI) – said today that they would lower lending rates by 25-50 basis points from April 1.

While Allahabad Bank and UBI said that they would lower their benchmark prime lending rates (BPLRs) by 25 basis points, Uco Bank and OBC announced a reduction of 50 basis points.

Several other public sector lenders, including Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Union Bank of India, have already announced similar measures effective April 1. While these banks were unlikely to cut their BPLRs further, other government banks might announce further rate cuts in the coming days.
 

RATE REMEDY
Bank	Reduction (in basis points)	BPLR  (%)
BoB	50	12.00
BoI	50	12.00
Union Bank	50	12.00
Uco Bank	50	12.00
OBC	50	12.00
HDFC*	50	14.00
Allahabad Bank	25	12.25
UBI	25	12.25
* Retail prime lending rate effective March 25; benchmark prime lending rate for others from April 1 Source: Banks

At the same time, Allahabad Bank also decided to realign deposit rates, while OBC was expected to take a call in the next few days.

In Delhi, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar said private banks were not doing enough to cut interest rates. The banks which pared rates said that there were strong signals from RBI to reduce lending rates, particularity after the recent 50-basis-point reduction in the repo and reverse repo rates.

Since October, RBI has reduced repo rate by 400 basis points to 5 per cent, while reverse repo has been lowered by 250 basis points to 3.5 per cent. The cash reserve ratio has also been cut by 400 basis points to 5 per cent to inject Rs 1,60,000 crore into the system.

In recent weeks, the RBI and the government had prodded banks, especially foreign and private sector players, to lower lending rates as the cost of funds has also come down.

“When the RBI reduced the repo rate, which was a strong signal for reducing interest rates, we did not do so, mainly because we were waiting for the market situation to improve. Now there is sufficient liquidity and inflation is almost zero. So, we have decided to go in for a rate cut,” said Allahabad Bank Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) K R Kamath.

“The bank had taken the decision to reduce interest rate a week ago on the back of improved liquidity,” added Uco Bank CMD S K Goel.

“The decision to reduce interest rate is to align ourselves with market conditions, and the demand and supply of credit,” said S C Gupta, UBI CMD.