Known as the lowest base rate in the industry, State Bank of India’s lending rate will no more be recognized with the same name as the bank has plans of raising its minimum lending rate by 50-75 basis points and that too by later today.

“There is a possibility of hiking base rate by 50-75 basis points by today evening”, the SBI Chairman, Mr. Pratip Chaudhuri told to the reporters today.

Currently, SBI’s base rate is 9.25% and the hike in the lending rate will definitely make home, auto and commercial loans with the bank expensive.

Few days back, there were reports of hike of 25 basis points by the private sector leader ICICI Bank, which stated the tightening of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of India last month as the reason behind the action, but now a dozen banks have either started planning the same action or have already started working with the new hikes.

According to the reports, RBI has hiked key short-term lending and borrowing rates by 25 basis points (0.25 per cent) each with immediate effect to tackle inflation. But this action has severely affected many as the short-term lending (repo) rate has directly rose to 7.5% whereas the borrowing (reverse repo) rate has increased by 6.5%.