The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued operational guidelines for the Rs 30,000 crore special liquidity facility for non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) announced in May 2020.
The guidelines include eligibility criteria for institutions availing of the facility, and SBI Capital Markets (SBICaps) has set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) called SLS Trust to administer the scheme.
The SPV will purchase short-term papers from eligible NBFCs and housing finance companies (HFCs), who will utilise the proceeds under this scheme solely for the purpose of extinguishing existing liabilities.
The instruments will be commercial papers (CPs) and non-convertible debentures (NCDs) with a residual maturity of not more than three months and rated as investment grade.
The facility will not be available for any paper issued after 30 September 2020 and the SPV will cease to make fresh purchases after 30 September 2020 and would recover all dues by 31 December 2020, or as may be modified subsequently under the scheme.
To be eligible under the scheme, NBFCs and HFCs must have an investment-grade rating and their capital adequacy ratio should not be below the regulatory minimum of 15 percent for NBFCs and 12 percent for HFCs as on 31 March 2019.
Their net non-performing assets (NPA) ratio should not be more than 6 percent as on 31 March 2019. They should have made a profit in at least one of the last two preceding financial years. They should not have been reported under the special mention account (SMA)-1 or SMA-2 category by any bank for their borrowings during the last one year prior to 1 August 2018.
Apart from this, they should also comply with the requirement of the SPV for an appropriate level of collateral from the entity which, however, would be optional and decided by the SPV.