The state owned banks has finally announced special relief measures for home loan buyers and small scale enterprises (SME) after deliberations of more than a week. All 28 state-owned banks have revised home loan interest rates at 9.25% below Rs 20 lakh and
8.5% for loans up to Rs 5 lakh.

The move would prove helpful to lower and middle-income class besides increasing demand in the reality sector. Reality sector is facing the heat of global slowdown with significant decline in growth rate.

Union government is likely to announce a special package for the housing sector on Monday. The special package may include cheaper home loans, full waiver of processing charges and concessions on margin money. There may be reduction in the interest rates and exemption from home processing fees up to Rs 5 lakh. RBI may also announce relaxation in the risk-weight and margin requirement for home loans. Currently, risk weight age for home loans up to Rs 20 lakh is 50 per cent, which is likely to be hiked.

The Reserve Bank of India is taking various measures to control further depreciation of rupee. The bank sold $20.6 billion in October as per the recently released bulletin of the bank. Rupee witnessed a record fall in October and is currently varying at 49-50.50 to a US dollar.

Riga - Parex Banka, the Latvian bank recently nationalized by the government of the Baltic state, stepped up its attempts to balance its books Monday by issuing an appeal to bondholders to negotiate new terms for their investments.

After running into liquidity problems, Parex is already trying to renegotiate terms on two large syndicated loans worth 984 million dollars that fall due next year.

Paris - French bank Societe Generale said Monday it had suffered only "negligible" losses in the 50-billion-dollar securities fraud allegedly engineered by a leading Wall Street broker.

In a statement the bank said its exposure to Madoff Investment Securities LLC, and the so-called Ponzi scheme run by its head, Bernard L Madoff, was "below 10 million euros" (13.46 million dollars).

Dublin  - In a move aimed at restoring confidence in the banking system and encouraging lending, Ireland's government on Sunday announced a 10-billion-euro (13.4-billion-dollar) rescue plan for the country's banks amid the deepening global financial crisis.

The government said it would use money from the 18.7-billion-euro state pension fund to invest and also wants existing shareholders and private investors to support a recapitalization.