The RBI has shelved indefinitely its proposal to get commercial banks to link their lending rates to an external benchmark like the repo rate or the government treasury bill rate.
External benchmarking means commercial banks linking the interest rates charged by them on different categories of loans to an external interest rate.
Benchmarking of a bank’s Interest rate with external rates like repo rate is beneficial for customers of the banks.
State Bank of India is the only bank that has linked its deposits rate to repo rate.