Cheaper retail loans to drive consumption

The Finance Minister announced a few measures to make retail loans cheaper and easily available to drive consumption. Housing, vehicle and high-value consumption goods are expected to receive a fillip from the announcements. She also assured that working capital loans for the industry will become cheaper.

FM Sitharaman announced additional liquidity of Rs 5 lakh crore for the banking sector and this will definitely help in reviving the real estate sector and in turn the housing finance sector.

Further, liquidity support of Rs 20,000 crore will be available to Housing Finance Companies (HFCs) by the National Housing Bank (NHB), thereby increasing the total support to Rs 30,000 crore. Many developers will now be able to complete their projects stuck or delayed which were languishing due to lack of funds.

She said banks will pass on RBI rate cut benefits to borrowers through MCLR reduction. Banks will also launch repo rate and external benchmarklinked loan products that will lead to reduced easy monthly installments for housing, vehicle and other retail loans.

“The slacking economy and the slump in various sectors, including automobiles, housing and MSMEs, was a grave concern – not just for industry stakeholders but also for the government. In a major boost to the slowing economy that comes literally in the nick of time, the FM on Friday has hit a sixer with a slew of announcements for the banking and financial sector including NBFCs, HFCs and even MSMEs,’ said Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants.