Asian stocks are lower today as Chinese and Hong Kong shares fall. The Shanghai Composite is off 0.38% while the Hang Seng is down 1.58%. The Nikkei 225 is trading down by 0.65%. US stocks closed well off session lows on Friday, helped by a sharp rise in health care shares.

Back home, India share markets opened the day on a negative note tracking global markets. The BSE Sensex is trading lower by 180 points while the NSE Nifty is trading lower by 66 points. The BSE Mid Cap index and BSE Small Cap index opened the day down by 0.4% & 0.3% respectively.

All sectoral indices have opened the day in red with metal stocks and PSU stocks witnessing maximum selling pressure. The rupee is trading at 65.23 to the US$.

In the news from the banking sector. State-run lenders State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank has raised their lending rates by up to 20 basis points, a move that will push up the cost of all retail loans, including home, auto and personal loans – both existing as well new.

SBI increased the one-year marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 20 basis points to 8.15% from 7.95% across various maturities. While PNB increased its lending rates by 15 bps to 8.3%.

The decision comes a day after the bank announced a 50-bps hike in term deposit rates across various maturities.

On 28 February, SBI increased the interest rate on various term deposits with immediate effect. For retail domestic deposits below Rs 10 million, SBI fixed interest rate at 6.4% while the interest rate on one-year deposit has been raised from 6.25% to 6.75%.

The lending rate hike also comes in the wake of banks as a whole seeing pick-up in credit demand. After many years of low single-digit credit growth, the quarterly loan demand crossed the double-digit mark at close to 11% in the three months to December 2017.

SBI share price & PNB share price opened down by 0.9% & 1.4% respectively.

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