The Reserve Bank of India announced new measures to improve liquidity for nonbanking financial companies, as well as to create a central registry for fraud information in the payments sector.

The central bank said Aug. 7 it plans to raise a bank's exposure limit to a single NBFC to 20% of the bank's Tier 1 capital, up from 15% currently. Banks will also be able to offer up to 1 million rupees of loans to NBFCs per borrower from the agricultural sector, and up to 2 million rupees per borrower from the micro and small enterprise sector.

The RBI also plans to create a centralized system to monitor and track frauds in the payment systems in near real time. A detailed framework for the so-called central payment fraud registry will be put in place by the end of October.

The central bank will also make the National Electronic Funds Transfer payment system available round-the-clock from December.

As of Aug. 6, US$1 was equivalent to 71.04 Indian rupees.