Financial sector stocks rally

Mumbai: Shares of housing finance companies (HFCs), non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and public sector banks (PSBs) were major gainers after the Reserve Bank of India announced measures to boost liquidity to cash-starved sectors by providing Rs 1 lakh crore additional liquidity and also took additional measures to ease their financial distress.

The gainers among the HFCs and NBFCs on the BSE included Indiabulls Housing Finance (15 per cent), Piramal Enterprises (7.60 per cent), LIC Housing Finance (8.17 per cent), Shriram Transport Finance (7.66 per cent), PNB Housing Finance (4.91 per cent), Can Fin Homes (2.12 per cent), GIC Housing Finance (1.61 per cent), Dewan Housing Finance (5 per cent).

The PSBs also gained with Nifty PSU Bank Index closing up by 2.83 per cent. The top gainers on the NSE included SBI (3.23 per cent), Bank of Baroda (3.86 per cent), PNB (2.99 per cent), Canara Bank (2.77 per cent), UCO Bank (4.64 per cent) and Central Bank of India (1.68 per cent).

Sandeep Agarwal, head – Real Estate Finance, Centrum Financial Services said, "RBI has given a window to lenders including Banks & NBFCs to not classify projects or developers as having delayed / defaulted, if the reasons for delay in providing Occupancy Certificate to buyers are beyond the control of the promoters.” The RBI would later announce the qualifying criteria for this policy.

S Ranganathan, head of research at LKP Securi-ties, said,"The one-year extension for loans to commercial real estate benefits several NBFC and HFCs.