“I don’t know of one moneylender who’s bankrupt!"

Dr KC Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor of RBI, speaks on financial inclusion

 

...........There was no plan or provocation. It was accidental and incidental. The RBI governor (Dr YV Reddy) was visiting Pondicherry to meet the chief minister. As Indian Bank was the SLBC (state level bankers’ committee) convener for Pondicherry he wanted me to accompany him. On the way, we were thinking of discussion points when the Governor suggested that we should propose to the chief minister that we will provide all households in the state with a bank account each. The chief minister liked the idea and assured us all support. The same evening he (chief minister) called a meeting of all bankers where the first circular on financial inclusion was drafted..............

 

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Competition panel sets up eminent persons advisory group

New Delhi, May 8: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has constituted an Eminent Persons Advisory Group (EPAG) to give inputs and advice on issues impacting markets and competition, among others. The group of ‘wise persons’ include Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, former Chairman, Infosys, Mr V.N. Kaul, former Comptroller and Auditor General, Dr Rakesh Mohan, former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank, Ms Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon, Dr Bakul Dholakia, former Director, IIM-Ahmadabad, Dr S.L Rao, former Chairman, CERC, Mr N.L Mitra, former Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU, Bangalore and Ms Rohini Nilekani, NGO activist, Bangalore. The first meeting of the group is tentatively planned in July 2012, a Corporate Affairs Ministry release said here on Tuesday. The group will have interaction/meetings with the commission two to three times a year, it added.

HBL

RBI sub-office starts functioning

Srinagar, May 8: The upgraded sub-office of Reserve Bank of India today started functioning here. The office shall work for summer months in Kashmir.  The Cell of Foreign Exchange Department is already functional in Srinagar. Besides, the Cells of Rural Planning and Credit Department (RPCD) and Department of Banking Supervision (DBS) carved out of the Jammu Regional Office, have started functioning from existing premises at Raj Bagh, Srinagar.........

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Traders knocking on temple doors for change

.........Chikkaballapur : The traders have approached the local banks to help them, but the bank authorities point fingers at the Reserve Bank of India for not releasing enough currency notes of lower denominations. But the officials in the Reserve Bank of India say that they have not received any request from banks for currency notes of lower denominations. Given the situation, the traders are left with no choice but pay commission to the temples for change to ensure that their business runs smoothly with no standoffs with customers...................

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Will RBI be a better judge for banking mergers?

......RBI is a prudential regulator of banks, while CCI is a competition regulator for the whole economy, including the financial sector. Prudential regulation requires laying out and enforcing rules that limit risk-taking of banks, ensuring safety of depositors’ funds, stability of the financial sector and other public policy requirements. Thus, regulation of M&As by RBI would be determined by such benchmarks......

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Seeking divine intervention

....There are three institutions that keep India running: the Supreme Court, the Election Commission and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). To be sure, most of the economic mess in India has the government behind it. And often the RBI is called in as a vacuum cleaner. But even the world’s best vacuum cleaner cannot be successfully used to clean up a garbage dump. Further, the government appears to have infected the RBI, which recently cut policy rates by a bigger-than-expected magnitude while acknowledging further risks to inflation despite slower growth, and flagging several reasons why it should not have cut rates.............

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Supply system is not responding in line with demand, says Gokarn

.....“The Government is spending more on consumption and subsidies. Unless we can bring public spending back into capacity building, the gross investment will not go up,”.........

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Tweaking the policy in instalments

The RBI, in its policy liberalisation of September 25, 2011, raised the ECB limit. The limit was hiked by 50 per cent to $750 million for real estate, industrial and infrastructure firms, and by 100 per cent to $200 million for hotels, hospitals and IT firms by. Since then, the RBI has tweaked the ECB policy a number of times with the objective of facilitating higher overseas borrowings...........

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RBI must give 'I understand' signal to market: Mecklai

....Talking about the RBI’s role in helping the rupee gain further, Mecklai clarified that the RBI needs to walk away from its slightly 'draconian' stance, unlike what it had done in November-December last year. Providing cues that reflect the understanding side of RBI can also help, pointed out Mecklai. .............

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RBI to decide on probe into irregularities in Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank

....."The bank is already under direction of the Reserve Bank ... Decision on any further investigation in such case is to be taken by the RBI considering all facts and circumstances,".........

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Banks asked to adopt risk management system before rising insurance cover

NEW DELHI: The government has asked the Reserve Bank and Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) to adopt risk management system before doubling the insurance cover for bank deposits to Rs 2 lakh. The proposal of the DICGC for increasing the deposit insurance cover for banks from the existing Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh has been examined, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in the Rajya Sabha. "The government has advised the DICGC and the Reserve Bank of India to adopt a risk-based deposit insurance premium structure, before the proposal of the DICGC is considered for approval," he said...............

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RBI cannot rescue rupee, want to know what will?

......“While RBI is trying to buy time by some of the measures they have announced, the real solution lies with the government in terms of how the balance of payments on the current account is actually adjusted and you can’t have a dramatic adjustment. It has consequences as far as growth is concerned,” .......

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RBI’s final securitisation guidelines may leave the market cold

......On the whole, while it seems RBI has put a lot of thought since the September 2011 guidelines, neither are the Final Guidelines benign nor malignant. The Final Guidelines may just leave the market very neutral for acceptance.

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Rupee has more to adjust, RBI cannot be saviour: CLSA

........ "The real solution lies with the government in terms of how the balance of payments on the current account is actually adjusted and you can't have a dramatic adjustment. It has consequences as far as growth is concerned. To me, it is still a protracted period of adjustment that India has to go through. So, RBI is not necessarily going to be the saviour, it can't be.".................

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RBI has little room for lowering interest rate further: Gokarn

The Reserve Bank has little room for lowering interest rates further as it still sees inflationary pressure in the medium to long term, Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn said today. "We started that process (reducing interest rates) in April. But if you look at our inflation projections in relation to what we consider as long-term or medium objective, there are inflation pressures. That in a sense, limits the room that we have to reduce rates," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci meeting........... 

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Relax, things are not as bad as doomsdayers claim

......... The government and the RBI are now ultra-cautious in their approach to the growth-inflation trade off, and that makes for sounder policies that the ones that were made in the clamor for growth in the 2000s......................

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RBI asks banks to conduct stress test on their securitisation

The stress tests should cover various factors like rise in default rates in the underlying portfolios in a situation of economic downturn, rise in pre-payment rates due to fall in rate of interest or rise in income levels of the borrowers leading to early redemption of exposures, the RBI said

Mumbai: In order to ensure an orderly and healthy growth of securitisation market, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday asked banks to perform stress tests at regular intervals to ensure that they are not exceeding the prudential limits............

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RBI IRDA for KYC norms

SEBI said it was in talks with other regulators, including RBI and IRDA, for common know-your-customer (KYC) norms for the financial sector...............

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