Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor on Friday held a press conference to announce various measures in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
Das announced that the EMI moratorium on term loans, which the RBI had announced in its earlier presser, has now been extended by another three months that is from June 1 to August 31, 2020.
"In the view of the extension of coronavirus lockdown and continuing disruption on account of COVID-19, these measures are being further extended by another 3 months from June 1 to Aug 31," Das said.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had on March 27 allowed banks and financial institutions to offer a moratorium of three months on payment of instalments of all term loans outstanding as on March 1 to help mitigate hardship faced by borrowers.
"All commercial banks (including regional rural banks, small finance banks and local area banks), co-operative banks, all -India Financial Institutions, and NBFCs (including housing finance companies and micro-finance institutions) ("lending institutions") are being permitted to allow a moratorium of three months on payment of instalments in respect of all term loans outstanding as on March 1, 2020," the RBI had said.
Earlier, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that over 3.2 crore people availed RBI's 3-month moratorium that was announced on March 27.
In addition to this, RBI reduced repo rate by 40 basis points from 4.4% to 4% in an effort to further boost liquidity in the economy which has been reeling under the impact of COVID-19 induced countrywide lockdown.
As a result, the reverse repo rate stands at 3.35 per cent, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.
Notably, this was the third presser by Shaktikanta Das in the context of coronavirus-related measures in the last two months. The first one was held on March 27 and the second one was on April 17. In these two pressers, the RBI governor had announced several measures to ease liquidity pressure in the banking system and to boost the economy from the coronavirus shock.
