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Housing, personal loan rates may drop

Bankers foresee the lowering of interest rates on housing, automobile and personal loans as they expect the lending rate to come down following the cut in the key interest rates in the mid-term credit policy announced by Reserve Bank of India Governor Bimal Jalan in Mumbai on Tuesday.

ABN Amro chief economist Ajit Ranade said the manufacturing sector had expected a cut in the bank rate, CRR and repo rate of 0.25 per cent by the RBI but the scaling down of the expected GDP growth by one per cent was 'not much' keeping in view the poor monsoon, which would have adverse ramifications on the agriculture sector.

Ranade also expected the lowering of interest rates on housing, automobile and personal loans.

He said that low deposit interest rates will not put off the consumers as inflation is expected to hover around four per cent throughout the year.

According to Indian Bank CMD Ranjana Kumar, banks had been given greater flexibility for fixing interest rates. She said the RBI Governor had asked bankers to simplify the formalities for exporters as the country's exports were looking up.

She said that her bank's board and asset management committee will analyse the situation before taking a decision on the prime lending rate cut.

Saying that the RBI credit policy was in line with expectations, the ICICI MD H N Sinnor said that the present rate cuts were in accordance with the global interest regimes.

He said there would be further cuts in deposits and lending rates and added that the rate cut would boost the credit offtake.

Corporation Bank CMD Cherian Vergese said that the smaller banks would benefit with the monthly release of interest on cash reserve ratio instead of the current system of quarterly release.

He said the interest cut should benefit housing and consumer loans apart from benefitting the corporate world. He said that RBI was moving towards motivating banks for self-regulations.

Vergese was also confident that the interest rate would go down further. ''We have to fine tune the interest rates'', he said.

UNI

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