PNB not to hike home loan rates

Public sector Punjab National Bank on Friday said it had no plans to raise the rate of interest on home loans, after two leading private sector banks hiked interest rates by 0.5 per cent across the board.

"We have no plans to increase our rate of interest at present," S C Gupta, PNB chairman and managing director said.

ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank on Thursday raised the home loan rates by 0.5 per cent across the maturity slabs.

Gupta said PNB targeted to bring down its gross non-performing assets to 4 per cent, from the current 5.96 per cent, of the total advances by 2006.

"Our net NPA is at present 0.20 per cent and we have decided to reduce our gross NPA to 4 per cent by the 2006," he said.

Gupta said PNB was actively promoting various programmes to improve the performance of agriculture sector.

"Credit to the agriculture increased by 24.5 per cent during 2004-05 and its ratio of agriculture credit improved from 18.49 per cent to 18.98 per cent in 2005 thereby surpassing the national average of 18 per cent."