
RBI February rate cut sees mixed transmission: Deposit rates fall while lending rates stay high
Reserve Bank of India’s first rate cut in five years into deposit and lending rates were mixed in February. While banks lowered rates on new deposits, they did not offer lower rates to new loan borrowers immediately.
Data released Thursday by the RBI showed that the weighted average domestic term deposit rate on fresh deposits of banks fell to 6.48% in February from 6.56% a month ago. On the outstanding deposits, the rate remained unchanged at 7.02%.
At the same time, the weighted average lending rate (WALR) on fresh rupee loans of banks increased to 9.40% in February from 9.32% in the previous month. This was because MCLR had gone up by 5 basis points in February. In the subsequent month, one-year median MCLR fell by 5 bps to 9.00% in March, the RBI data showed.
But WALR for outstanding loans fell to 9.80% in February from 9.87% a month ago, indicating that existing borrowers may have benefitted from the RBI’s policy rate cut.
WALR reflects loans priced to external benchmarks as well as those linked to banks’ marginal cost of funds.
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According to experts, fall in MCLR could reflect in the overall lending rates for fresh loans in March. The transmission of regulatory rate cuts happens quickly in case of repo-linked benchmark rate. The transmission in case of MCLR-linked rates, which depend on banks' costs, takes a longer time of at least two quarters for the effect to play out.
Nearly 61% of floating rate loans were linked to external benchmarks, while 36% were priced on MCLR at the end of