With hardly a few days remaining for base rate coming into play, banks are working hard on the implementation of the new system. Not even one bank has informed their base rate. The biggest lender in the country, State Bank of India was anticipated to take the lead in declaring the base rate for personal loan which is coming into play from 1st July 2010.
Actually SBI had stated that it would declare its base rate by June 15. A top SBI official has stated that the bank has held back its declaration as it has yet to clarify certain points such as farm loans and export credit interest rate once the base rate sets in.
But other banks say that during an unofficial meeting, SBI had declared that its base rate would be nearly 7.5%. A top executive of a big public sector bank said, “By doing that, SBI was running the risk of being out of sync with the rest of the market.”
Moreover nobody has an idea about the base rate decided by the biggest private sector lender, ICICI Bank. It is anticipated that the base rate for private sector banks would be below their public sector peers.