MUMBAI: In an unscheduled address by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das recently, he laid out the contours of a new range of measures to counter the pandemic.

Das announced an on-tap liquidity facility of Rs 50,000 crore to ease access to healthcare services for all stakeholders in the Covid fight. Under this, banks will be permitted to provide fresh lending support to vaccine makers, manufacturers, logistics firms, etc. Banks are being incentivised to sanction these loans under priority sector classifications, the Governor announced.

Here are the specifics of Das' address:

— On-tap liquidity of Rs 50,000 crore at repo rate. Under this, banks can support healthcare stakeholders like vaccine makers, hospitals, medical equipment makers as well as patients till March 31, 2022.

— Till repayment or maturity, such lending will be considered priority sector lending. Under this scheme, a special loan book will be created by banks.

— Banks can park liquidity equal to their Covid loan books at 40 basis points above the reverse repo rate.

— RBI will do a second purchase of government securities aggregating Rs 35,000 crore in two weeks.

— A targeted long term repo operation up to Rs 10,000 crore will be started for small finance banks. The upper limit is Rs 10 lakh per borrower.

— Small finance banks can now on-lend to smaller MFIs of asset size up to Rs 500 crore.

— The RBI will allow states to remain in overdraft for a maximum of 50 days. The limit was 36 days earlier. Besides, the number of consecutive overdraft days will go up to three weeks from two weeks earlier. This facility pertains to funds under the Ways and Means Advances.

— Individuals and MSMEs borrowers can avail one-time restructuring till September 30, 2021. This covers those having exposure up to Rs 25 crore, and those that were standard as of March 31 this year.