An India's central bank-appointed panel proposed raising the aggregate ways and means advances limit for state governments to 678.39 billion rupees ($7.07 billion) from 610.08 billion rupees. Ways and means advances are temporary loans from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), India's central bank, that help states bridge temporary cash-flow mismatches. The panel also recommended spreading state market borrowing more evenly across the year, allowing states to freely withdraw Consolidated Sinking Fund (CSF) balances above 5% of outstanding marketable debt and guarantees, and raising the share of eligible CSF funds available through the Special Drawing Facility (SDF) to 75% from 50%. It proposed reducing the maximum consecutive working days states can remain in overdraft to 10 from 14. Heavy borrowing by Indian states earlier this year had complicated the central bank's efforts to lower interest rates.