The Centre and the Reserve Bank will be hard at work over the festival period to come up with the details of the interest waiver scheme.

The speculation is the relief will not be uniform across all categories of loans, and different sub-limits across the categories are likely.

The finance ministry and the RBI will also have to decide whether all borrowers in a category will be eligible for the waivers or if only the vulnerable among them will get the relief.

They will also have to specify how the benefit will be passed on by banks to the customers — whether it would be adjusted against the outstanding in one go or in phases.

A report by Edelweiss said the interest for banks under its coverage forms 1.5-2 per cent of the loan sum.

Edelweiss said 25-40 percent of loan books for most banks under its coverage will qualify for the Rs 2-crore compound interest waiver.

The development comes at a time banks are staring at uncertainty with regard to their asset quality.

Bankers for now are not expecting a spike in their bad loans.

Recently, the new SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara had said the number of accounts that were applying for the restructuring was “manageable”.

“Collection efficiency has improved, and most banks expect the restructuring pool to be in the low single digits, with negligible deferments in the large corporate portfolio,” analysts at Motilal Oswal said in a research note.

“Asset quality is likely to remain under watch as the moratorium ends; however, the bulk of stress is likely to manifest over the second half of 2020-21,” the Motilal Oswal report said.