Loan logic

New Delhi, March 13: HDFC Bank will raise its base lending rate by 50 basis points from tomorrow, meaning all loans will become costlier.

India’s No. 2 private bank has also revised its deposit rates from tomorrow by 25 to 100 basis points on select maturities, sources said.

The base rate, or the minimum lending rate, will go up 50 basis points to 8.7 per cent, the second increase in less than 20 days.

The Mumbai-based bank last raised its base rate by 45 basis points to 8.2 per cent on February 24.

Fixed deposits below Rs 15 lakh with maturity between 46 days and 90 days will earn 5 per cent interest rate, up 100 basis points, the highest increase among all the maturity slabs.

Interest rate for term deposits between 61 days and 90 days will go up 50 basis points to 5.5 per cent from 5 per cent interest rate now.

The interest rate of fixed deposits with a tenor of 366-380 days has been increased 25 basis points to 8.25 per cent. Term deposits of 2 years 17 days to 3 years will earn an 8.5 per cent interest, an increase of 0.25 per cent.

Most of the increase is in the short-term duration slabs of up to two years much in line with other lenders.

The bank last revised fixed deposit rates on January 4, before the third-quarter review of the credit policy in the last week of January.

Banks have been raising interest rates after the Reserve Bank of India announced a 25 basis point hike in short-term lending (repo) and borrowing (reverse repo) rates in its third quarterly review of the monetary policy on January 25.

BPLR move

Meanwhile, HDFC Bank has also decided to increase its benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR) by 75 basis points to 17.25 per cent from March 14.

This will make all kinds of existing floating loans expensive by at least 75 basis points, resulting in higher installment amounts.

Last month, the country’s largest lender — the State Bank of India — raised lending and deposit rates on select maturities by 25 basis points in response to the policy rate hike announced by the Reserve Bank in January.