The central bank is firing from all fronts to reduce the impact of the surging covid crisis on the economy. Speaking at an unscheduled press conference on Wednesday, RBI Governor laid out a slew of steps for Covid related healthcare services and also small businesses. Here are the highlights -:
- For Covid related healthcare services RBI will provide a liquidity window of Rs 50,000 crore.
- Banks can new liquidity window for on-lending to hospitals, medicine, vaccine manufactures, importers of Covid related drugs
- Banks can classify lending to health infra under priority sector lending:
- Businesses that have availed restructuring last fiscal and opted for two year moratorium last year, can seek a longer moratorium and get their loans further extended
- Loans up to Rs 25 crore, that have not been restructured earlier, can seek fresh restructuring up to September 2021.
- Loans to MFIs will be recognised as priority sector.
- RBI will give 3-year funds at repo rate (4%) to small finance banks through long-term repos for on-lending.
- Banks have been allowed to use counter-cyclical provisions for making specific provisions for bad loans.