Private sector lender Kotak Mahindra Bank today joined its larger rivals and announced a 0.15 per cent cut in base rate to 9.85 per cent.
"We have reduced our base rate from the current level of 10 per cent to 9.85 per cent with effect from April 16," Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB), which recently merged smaller player ING Vysysa Bank to become the fourth largest lender in the private sector space, said in a statement here.
All the borrowers, including the existing ones, will benefit from the rate revision, the bank said.
KMB joins a growing list of lenders, which have cut their minimum lending rates since RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan's admonition last Tuesday for not passing the benefits of the central bank's two rate cuts to borrowers.
At the customary press conference after the policy review, where Rajan held rates, he termed banks' contention of the cost of funds being high as "nonsense" and asked them to cut the rates sooner.
The largest lender State Bank announced a 0.15 per cent cut in its base rate the same day, while others like HDFC Bank (0.15 pc), ICICI Bank (0.20 pc) and Lakshmi Vilas Bank (0.20 pc) also followed suit by announcing base rut revisions. Mortgage major HDFC, too, slashed its lending rate by 20 basis points to 9.85 per cent.
The RBI has cut its repo rate, at which it lends to the system, twice this year by a cumulative 0.50 percent to 7.5 percent.
