The Reserve Bank of India, on Friday announced sops for the exporters and housing finance companies by extending the time period for credit facilities. The apex bank has increased the period for post-shipment export credit to 180 days from existing 90 days.

The move would help exporters who are facing liquidity problem due to the ongoing financial crisis. The bank is already providing refinance help to NBFCs, HFCs and MFs to control credit crunch and refinance facility is further increased to June 30, 2009, from March 31, 2009.

RBI has also extended the Forex swap facility to June 30. RBI has however, not touched the interest rate and it would continue to be at 2.5 percentage points. The new rules pertaining to export credit would be effective from December 1.

The decision for easing the norms is taken after the meeting of RBI chairman, D Subbarao with the executives of various public and private sector banks. Bankers have apprised RBI regarding the demand of SMEs for easing the norms for non-performing asset classification. Industry is demanding 180 days period for declaring assets as non-performing instead of the present 90 days.