National coin exhibition a hit with Hyderabad participants

...........Hanuman Sada, a numismatist at the exhibition, said he had started collecting coins as it was his hobby, and now he owned world's rarest coins. "I am fond of collecting old coins, since childhood I used to take out coins from the Ganga in Varanasi. I have exhibited coins in Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and they have awarded me. I have a collection of thousands of year old coins, including Kushan, Chattrap, Maurya Sassanian, Guptas and all ancient coins," Sada said..................

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InfiniteCourses.com Offers Information About RBI Recruitment Process, Eligibility Criteria And More

......However, so many of these aspirants fail to make it to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) due to the lack of information. Like many government companies of India, the RBI has its own recruitment process and you need to be in complete knowledge of the same to get the job with ease. Not only do you need to know about the RBI Recruitment process, but also about the various openings in the bank as also the qualification requirement and age criteria for the same. You would also be able to prepare yourself thoroughly if you had substantial information on the important dates of the recruitment........

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Financial inclusion is a business opportunity, says Visa

......'Financial inclusion', the phrase invented to paper over the widening economic disparities, has found a surprisingly new taker: Visa Inc, the transaction processing company that's taking baby steps into the evolving mobile phone payments business...................

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Red herring, or the real cause?

...... The flow of funds from foreign institutional investors has become an uneven and uncertain trickle due to fears over amendments to tax laws. The RBI itself in a paper (April 11) on foreign direct investment flows to India has attributed them to certain institutional factors that dampened the investors' sentiments. In these circumstances, the Finance Minister may have to put under the scanner the strength of the macro-economic fundamentals themselves. The fall of the rupee is a complex syndrome which had predominantly to do with India's economic (mis)management, rather than being brought on by Greece or Euro Zone...........

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Banking Laws Bill in Parliament today

..............The Bill, which was introduced in Lok Sabha in March 2011, seeks to empower Reserve Bank of India to dismiss a bank’s board and force a reconstruction of the board to protect the interests of depositors, shareholders and employees. This will pave way for the central bank to grant licences to industrial houses to set up banks. The other proposals in the Bill include increasing voting rights of an entity in a nationalised bank to 10% from the existing 1%. Besides, once legislated, the Bill will provide the RBI powers to ask for information from banks’ associate companies.........

Read - Hindustan Times

Slippery moves

It isn't an overnight happening. It has been coming, and coming for a long time. When it actually arrives, the country finds itself sucked into the cross-currents of global politics of economics. All along, the Reserve Bank of India, which has sort of been pushed to announce a huge cut in Bank Rate, has been virtually pleading with the fiscal authorities to see the writing on the wall. The pleadings have largely gone unheeded. With the rupee sliding continuously against the dollar, the political leadership is beginning to sense the gravity of the situation......................

Read - The Hindu

Report on capital needs under Basel III this week

............“Most public sector banks are well capitalised as of today,” said a member of the panel headed by State Bank of India (SBI) chairman and managing director Pratip Chaudhuri. “So, it will not be difficult to meet Basel-III requirements. The common equity of banks is good. The report will be submitted (to the finance ministry) very shortly after getting a green signal from all the banks.” It was the finance ministry that formed the committee to assess the additional capital needs of all PSBs in line with the recent Basel-III guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)...................

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The 'S' word returns

........... “We now have the worst of both worlds — not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both together. We have a sort of stagflation situation.” The “S” word, which he coined, is being mouthed with increasing frequency by India-watchers. It describes the current conditions pretty well. Inflation has been above the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) comfort zone for the past two years. It is unlikely to fall any time soon, given that the consumer price index was up 10.4 per cent in April 2012.......................

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Policy- making for Indian Planning

Book Review by P.P.Ramchandran

The book under review has contributions by fifteen experts in divers fields connected with policy- making. Dr.C.Rangarajan, in his Foreword invites pointed reference to a note prepared by Montek for the then Prime Minister in 1990, which charted the path for the economic reforms that were launched in 1991. Dr.Y.V.Reddy delineates the formal agreement concluded between the Government and the RBI for ending automatic monetisation, which laid the groundwork for legislation on fiscal responsibility. Montek also contributed in enabling the RBI to build up Reserves in its Balance Sheet. The current RBI Governor Dr. Subbarao showers praise on Montek for his extraordinary competence and skill in negotiating the settlement of the Rupee — Rouble deal with Russia.

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The exchange rate: economics bites back

........... So, in theory, a cheaper rupee should, in time, improve both the current and capital accounts of our external finances. But sharp and unexpected depreciations can also be excessive and destabilising. So, the RBI is, quite correctly, trying to put some brakes on the process, even though market intervention in turbulent times is more an art than a science. However, RBI actions are palliatives, at best. The real cure lies with the government’s economic policies......................

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BB not interested in India's swap funds

.......RBI Governor Dr D Subbarao announced formation of a $2 billion swap arrangement fund at the 24th Saarc finance governors' meeting in Pokhara, Nepal last week. The facility will be available in three instalments. “India has set the interest rates for the fund as it has provided the entire fund,” said the BB official, pointing at a higher interest rate. However, he said the fund is less costly than loans, such as Islamic Development Bank that charges a 5 percent interest rate..................

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Dollar inflows from exporters' FX accounts to support rupee

.......“Rupee weakness is driven by a strong dollar against global currencies and it would need unwinding of dollar strength to provide relief to the rupee. The RBI’s actions could only limit excessive traction between the dollar index and the dollar-rupee exchange rate,” .......................

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Gold lenders vow to be ‘fair’ to borrowers

The Rs.1 trillion organized gold loan market is implementing a code of conduct in an attempt to rebuild the image of lenders that took a beating after a recent clampdown by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The “fair practice code” released by the Association of Gold Loan Companies (AGLC), the industry body, prohibits non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) that lend money to borrowers with gold as collateral, from charging excessive interest rates. The companies also have to disclose the interest rate, processing fee and other service charges levied on customers. ........

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Rupee needs to depreciate in nominal terms : S.S.Tarapore

The RBI should have bought foreign exchange in the market during the period the rupee was appreciating and sold when the rupee was depreciating. This would have avoided very large fluctuations in the dollar- rupee exchange rate....


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Rupee depreciation

With reference to “Austerity and the rupee”, the editorial has rightly observed that the rupee's problems are largely structural, having to do with the current account deficit.  Had there been other significant reasons, we would have seen results when the government announced an increase in NRE deposits and EEFC measures. It is true that the RBI policy should be to buy aggressively when the rupee appreciates and sell when it is depreciates, besides cutting imports on fuel, fertiliser and gold and deregulating diesel and urea.

 - K. G. Varma, New Delhi (HBL)

Global feeder fund investors reap returns on falling rupee

At a time when almost everyone associated with the financial markets is getting jitters from the depreciation of the rupee, there is a small set of investors that is rejoicing for having invested in global feeder funds. This is because when the investments in these funds were made they were converted into dollars. However, the NAVs, when converted back into rupee, are showing smart profits even if the dollar-denominated returns are not so good. So even though RBI Governor D Subbarao, Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn and other top central bankers are trying to contain the weakness of the rupee, these investors, along with the exporters, are a happy lot.

TOI

Punjab to disburse welfare funds online

The Punjab government has issued instructions to directly credit cash in the bank accounts of beneficiaries under various welfare schemes through Electronic Benefit Transfer system to check delays and redtapism. Informing this here today, state's Social Security and Health Minister Madan Mohan Mittal said the SAD-BJP alliance government in consultation with Reserve Bank of India has adopted the EBT model under which cash benefits to be disbursed to the beneficiaries would be directly transferred to their accounts.......................

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