New Delhi: In a major relief for housing finance companies and the real estate sector, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said that National Housing Bank (NHB) would provide additional Rs 20,000 crore to HFCs, taking up the total liquidity support to Rs 30,000 crore.

She also said that partial credit guarantee scheme announced in the budget for purchase pooled assets of non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and HFCs upto Rs 1 lakh crore will be monitored at the highest level in each bank.

Further, in a move which would ease home loan interests, she said that banks would come with repo rate linked loan products.

Commenting on the development, Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director, Knight Frank India said: "The release of funds for the PSUs and the credit support HFCs as well as the NBFCs will provide some relief to the financial sector currently under pressure on account of NPAs. We expect these measures to have impact on the stressed assets that are awaiting completion."

For the real estate sector specifically, the alignment of the bank lending rates to the repo rate will have significant impact, he added.

(IANS)