Reserve Bank on Wednesday announced a slew of measures including loan restructuring for individual and small businesses hit hard by fresh Covid-19 wave.
To augment supply of goods for Covid care, the central bank opened `50,000 crore on-tap window to ease access to emergency health services to boost provision of immediate liquidity for ramping up Covid-19 related healthcare infrastructure and services in the country.
This liquidity window is being opened till March 31, 2022, he said, adding that under the scheme, banks can provide fresh lending support to a wide ranging of entities including vaccine manufacturers, importers and suppliers of vaccine and medical devices, hospitals and dispensaries and suppliers of oxygen and ventilators importers and also patients for treatment.
“Banks are being incentivised for quick delivery of credit under the scheme, through extension of priority sector classification to such lending... And these loans will continue to be classified under priority sector till repayment or maturity, whichever is earlier,” he said an unscheduled press briefing.
With regard to restructuring he said, borrowers that are individuals and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) having an aggregate exposure of up to Rs 25 crore would be considered for the new scheme.
This would be for those who have not availed restructuring under any of the earlier frameworks, including the Resolution Framework 1.0 of RBI dated August 6, 2020, and who are classified as standard as on March 31, 2021, shall be eligible for the Resolution Framework 2.0, he said.
Under the proposed framework, bank may be invoked up to September 30, and shall have to be implemented within 90 days after invocation, he added.
RBI has also introduced Rs 10,000-crore special long-term repo operation for small finance banks.