Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, on Friday cut its lending rates mainly for borrowers in the agriculture and small and medium enterprises segments by 0.5-3.5 percentage points but kept its main reference lending rate unchanged.
The bank said it has lowered the rate in view of the current economic slowdown “to provide some degree of relief to the customers on account of interest burden.”
The rate cut, which does not help retail or home loan borrowers, is with retrospective effect from 1 June. RBI is expected to pare its policy rate in its mid-quarter policy announcement on Monday.
The base rate of the bank, or the minimum lending rate, remains unchanged at 10%.
The bank had recently lowered short-term deposit rates by 0.25 percentage point.
