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NEW YORK, Jan. 2 ÛÓThe nationÛªs two biggest banks today officially ratified the first serious decline in bank lending rates since last July.</br></br>Both Bank of America in San Francisco and Citibank of New York-today lowered their prime lending rate from 2lVz percent to 20 Vz percent. The move was followed by a host of smaller banks.</br></br>The 21 Vz percent rate was the highest that key lending charge had ever reached, surpassing the 20 percent record it touched last spring, just before a sharp decline in interest rates that continued into the summer. The prime rate fell to 10% percent last July.</br></br>Chase Manhattan, the countryÛªs third-biggest ÛÓ reduced their prime rate to 20 Vz percent before Christmas to reflect substantial declines in open-market interest rates. Several more big banks, including New YorkÛªs-Chemical and Morgan Guaranty, did' so earlier this week. The prime rate is the interest banks charge their best corporate customers for a short-term loan and is the rate on which many other borrowing charges are based.</br></br>Analysts say that the steady decline in interest rates in the open market, where banks borrow many of the funds they then lend to their business customers, presage further prime rate declines in the next few weeks, air though no one expects rates to decline as quickly as they did last spring.