NEW DELHI: An industry body representing non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) on Friday urged Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to allow a one-time restructuring of loan repayment terms in an effort to help their borrowers with liquidity.
According to a statement released by the Finance Industry Development Council (FIDC) after a video meeting with Sitharaman and top officials, the council stated that retail NBFCs principally finance truck and taxi drivers, marginal farmers and very small businesses who will need working capital support to get back to normalcy after the lockdown. NBFCs, it said, would need to provide these borrowers staggered EMI plans starting with lower instalments from July and gradually increasing and possibly reaching normal EMI amount by end of March 2021. “We, therefore, seek permission to grant one-time restructuring of loan repayment terms without any additional provisioning,” FIDC said.
FIDC also sought an extension of the tenure of the Rs 30,000-crore special liquidity scheme to three years as against three months currently. The RBI has allowed one-time restructuring for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) registered with GST up to December 31, 2020, without any downgrade but with 5% additional provisioning.