Srei BNP Paribas has announced a hike in its benchmark rate by 25 basis points, from 17 per cent to 17.25 per cent, with immediate effect. The company?s Asset Liability Management Committee met and after reviewing the cost of borrowing, decided to increase its benchmark rate. This has been necessitated because of continuing increase in borrowing cost due to market and regulatory factors. Srei BNP Paribas had last increased its SBR in November 2011 by 100 basis points.

DK Vyas, CEO, said, ?Srei BNP Paribas being a customer focused company, decided to wait and look for a trend of increasing borrowing cost before it decided to pass on the incremental borrowing cost to its customers to maintain a healthy margin. We were looking for some interest rate cooling off in the recent RBI policy announcement which didn?t happen.

As such we had no choice but to increase our SBR.?