(ET)
ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda , Punjab National Bank and Bank of India are among the leading local lenders that Thursday raised their external reference benchmarks, used largely for pricing retail loans, a day after Reserve Bank of India increased its key rate for the second time in as many months to restrain inflation. About half of the country’s outstanding banking credit is linked to external rates.
These banks raised their respective external benchmark lending rates (EBLR) by 50 basis points (bps), matching the latest increase in the repo, or the rate at which RBI lends short-term funds to commercial banks. One basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
