Government To Issue Rules For Non-Banking Lenders Asset Buy Scheme

The Department of Financial Services (DFS) will issue the norms for the one-time partial credit guarantee scheme for public sector banks (PSBs) to purchase high-rated pooled assets of financially sound non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), a senior official said on Tuesday.

"The guidelines are ready, we will issue them in 1 to 2 days' time", Finance and Banking Secretary Rajeev Kumar said here during a review on the performance of state-run banks.

Last week, the Finance Ministry had said it would put in place an oversight mechanism for the one-time partial credit guarantee scheme for PSBs to purchase high-rated pooled assets of financially sound NBFCs as announced in the Budget 2019-20.

The government has received a proposal from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the draft modalities of the credit guarantee scheme, which would be operationalised by the RBI.

Presenting her maiden Union Budget in July, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government would provide a one-time partial credit guarantee of six months to PSBs for the first loss of up to 10 per cent to enable them to purchase pooled assets of financially sound NBFCs amounting to Rs 1 lakh crore.

This was aimed at ensuring financial support to the stressed housing finance companies (HFCs) and NBFCs which were facing a severe liquidity crunch following the series of payment defaults by IL&FS. This caused the drying up of bank funds to the NBFCs and HFCs from lenders fearing further addition to their massive non-performing assets (NPAs or bad loans), creating, thereby, a spiral effect on the economy.

"This would ease the liquidity stress in the NBFC sector and increase the access of these NBFCs to bank finance and, in turn, would enable them to continue to play their role in meeting the financing requirements of the economy", the statement said.

Sources here said the state-run banks would be allowed to pick up primarily 'AAA' rated assets of the NBFCs who have not defaulted, while only banks outside the RBI's Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework for resolving bad loans and those with strong balance sheets like State Bank of India (SBI), Canara Bank and Bank of Baroda would be allowed to participate in the scheme.

In a bid to improve regulatory oversight, the government has also proposed to bring housing finance companies under the RBI, removing them from the control of the National Housing Bank. All these steps are aimed at improving the condition of the NBFC sector as a whole.