.........“We have set up the committee under Bimal Jalan for bank licences. Let me announce the other members of the committee. They will be Usha Thorat, Chandu Bhave and Nachiket Mor who is on the RBI board right now. We will try our best to complete the process by January 2014,” Rajan said at a news conference after a board meeting. The panel will make its recommendations to the governor and deputy governors, who will place the final proposal before the committee of the RBI central board. The RBI chief here added that the central bank would take a call on whether to allow industry houses to enter the banking sector from which they have been barred till now....................
The very purpose of VITALINFO is to provide a platform for wider dissemination of updated information related to and happening of events in and around RBI.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Branching out
This refers to “Banks not inclusive enough” (Business Line, October 3). It is a well-known fact that the banking sector is almost entirely functional in the semi-urban and urban areas and is non-existent in the rural areas. Banking service can be inclusive only if the entire population has access to it. The RBI’s policy of granting licences to commercial corporations would be a welcome step, provided the new banks provide rural service and cater to the vulnerable section of society. In terms of rural service, India Post can do effective and inclusive service to the rural population as it has a wide operational network, especially in the rural areas.
T. R. Anandan (HBL)
A hundred small, considered steps - M.S.Sriram
......Unlike in the past where the personal views of the Governor of RBI were not known, we now have a governor at RBI whose position on the business of financial inclusion is well known much ahead of his assuming office. He not only appended his signature to that piece in The Indian Express soon after the microfinance crisis happened, but has also authored a report that has some radical recommendations with regard to financial inclusion. While a large number of them are worth considering, some of them are to be looked at with caution. They are to be looked at with caution, particularly because RBI has taken some explicit positions contrary to the tone and tenor of the Raghuram Rajan committee report on financial sector reforms..........
Visually-impaired can’t see coins !
.........Executive member of Daisy Forum of India, Ram Kamal , says the lack of distinction between the coins is a clear violation of the RBI’s own guidelines. “We have brought the issue to the notice of the authorities and they have promised to make the new series blind- friendly,” he added.
RBI committee invites suggestions on financial inclusion
.......The committee which is being headed by Nachiket Mor, member of the RBI's central board of directors, has members from the financial sector, from organisations that are engaged in developing new models of financial services delivery, in rural as well as urban contexts and have subject matter expertise. A Udgata, Principal Chief General Manager of the rural planning and credit department at the apex bank, is the member secretary of the committee............
Make contracts simple to help customers, RBI official tells banks
.........Banks need to apply principles of transparency to enable easier decision-making by clients, and verify assumptions about what clients understand and don’t understand about their products and the fine print in the contracts they sign. “If you’ve ever applied for a credit card, a student loan, or a housing loan, you know the feeling of signing your name to pages of barely understandable fine print. “What often happens as a result is that many people are caught by hidden fees and penalties, or saddled with loans they can’t afford,” said Joshi in her keynote address at the College of Agricultural Banking, Pune............
Bonds snap 3 weeks of losses; RBI reiterates OMO assurance
.....However, sentiment turned bullish after the RBI said it would keep liquidity adequate. Reiterating its stance, RBI Deputy Governor H R Khan said on Friday that the apex bank will conduct more bond purchases via open market operations if needed.............
Rajan to Set Right School of Defaulters
MUMBAI: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan is leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to end promoter abuse of the benign loan restructuring regime and is soon poised to mandate all banks to stick to uniform loan classification norms........
FOMC, RBI policy outcome is lot more predictable now: Vaibhav Sanghavi
........The policy events of FOMC and RBI in October are a lot more predictable than in September. Now, we are more aware of the path both FOMC and RBI are going to take, though there is always a possibility of a surprise. But relatively, it’s far better. I think it is going to be more of a non-event and we would be aligning our portfolios after clarity on the debt ceiling in the US, with a view of the likely quarterly earnings............
RBI withdraws case against MSU, varsity to appoint chair professor by March 2014
........"We had requested the RBI to reconsider the decision to carry out litigation and promised that we can find out eligible person as the RBI chair professor. The RBI felt that the request was genuine and has granted us time till March 31 2014 to fill up the post and make the Chair operational, failing which we will have to return the corpus fund," ..............
Barking up the wrong tree
The government’s decision to infuse more funds (over and above the Rs 14,000 crore set aside in Budget 2013-14) to beef up the capital of public sector banks is totally ill-conceived. It is also a sad commentary on the singular dearth of fresh ideas. It is a throwback to the pre-reform days when banks were told whom they should lend to and at what rate!..........
CPI Conundrum
.........While Rajan has clarified that RBI has not yet decided on moving to inflation targeting with CPI as the sole index, he has voiced concern over a "sticky and high" CPI inflation, which was making people reluctant to invest in fixed income assets like bonds and bank deposits, and instead shifting to gold and real estate. This was not just lowering household financial savings rate but also widening the current account deficit, weakening the rupee and posing a risk to growth revival. While Rajan has set up a committee to look at the nominal anchor, experts have started pointing to a number of flaws in the new CPI and the dangers of relying on it to frame monetary policy..........
RBI decision has builders worried
The latest review of the monetary policy would have disappointed most people as many were looking at the new RBI Governor, Raghuram Rajan, to make radical economic changes. However, high expectations of him providing all the solutions to the ailing Indian economy are grossly misplaced and unrealistic, said Sanjay Dutt , Executive Managing Director, South Asia, Cushman & Wakefield. “The RBI Governor has stuck to his mandate of managing the monetary risks which continue to be highly prone to inflationary and currency devaluation risks...
Managing liquidity
..... Thankfully, the RBI under the new Governor, Raghuram Rajan, seems quite alive to the problems caused by tight liquidity. To start with, he has reduced interest on the marginal standing facility — the main borrowing window for banks from the RBI today — by 75 basis points. Secondly, the RBI has announced open market purchases of bonds worth Rs 10,000 crore next week which, hopefully, will be a precursor to more such auctions to help ease liquidity pressures....................
Rajan Defends Report on States, Says It Will Bring Growth
RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today defended his development index for measuring backwardness of states, saying the aim is to "encourage development" and "everything over and above that is a political spin." Last month, the Raghuram Rajan panel report made a case for ending the 'special category' criteria for providing additional assistance to poorer states. It ranked Goa and Kerala as the most advanced states and Odisha and Bihar the least. "The whole point was we want to encourage development. If your development increases, then there will be bonus of more funds. Everything over and above that is a political spin," Rajan said after an RBI board meeting here.........
No reason to dispute govt’s growth estimate, says Rajan
............The Reserve Bank of India, on Friday, said the economy would grow by 5 to 5.5 per cent in the current fiscal, pinning its hopes on good farm output and improved exports. “We have no reason to dispute the growth rate projected by the government at 5 to 5.5 per cent,” RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan told reporters after a board meeting..........
Current crisis may be under control for time being: RBI Governor
.......Addressing the Indian Institute of Management Raipur (IIM-R) he linked the country's economy with cricket team, saying, "When they are going good, we turn them into Gods and when they are going bad, we throw stones at them. We first overlook the weaknesses and then when the growth declines, we conclude that the downfall was due to the weaknesses. The weaknesses however existed throughout. He said it that it is important to create sustainable growth." ...........
Thinking backwards
........Raghuram Rajan mentioned that he was not seeking Facebook "likes". He actually received quite a few. The RBI's mid-term policy review on September 20 must have given his admirers much heartburn and possibly earned him some "dislikes". The spotlight has turned on him again, with the release of the Rajan committee report on evolving a composite development index of states. ...........
Internal debt is worrying: Arvind Virmani
................“If there's one default, it will set off a chain reaction and would do a lot of damage to the economy,” Virmani added. He was at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, to give a talk to participants of the first-ever programme on monetary policy being held in India. He spoke to them on capital flows. The programme aims to explain how the Reserve Bank of India, as a regulator and supervisor of the banking system, operates its monetary policy instruments through the banking system........
Rescue the Indian economy
......India may have the advantage of talented techno-economists including the prime minister, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor and of course the finance minister who has been credited with possessing the expertise and experience of navigating the choppy waters of the domestic economy for far too long. But save the new RBI governor, who is yet to acquire the patina of performance in steering the Indian economy, the rest have failed miserably and comprehensively and have landed the economy in the shambles it is today...............
Feel-good, cheap consumer loans: Who is govt trying to fool
......It is not the government's job to tell banks where to lend and how much. Bankers can decide that for themselves based on their own assessments of creditworthiness. The RBI, in fact, went the other way less than a fortnight ago when it banned zero-interest consumer loans . What's the logic of banning what banks thought made sense and now enticing them to lend cheap to the same sector with promises of recapitalisation?...........
Janalakshmi inks 5-yr pact with Accenture to scale up
Janalakshmi Financial Services, a microfinance institution, has signed a five-year agreement with Accenture to scale-up operations and expand services to the urban poor. “The partnership with Accenture is to get business outsourcing solutions and IT services to facilitate our expansion,” said Ramesh Ramanathan, Chairman, Janalakshmi. “Since we had already built an in-house front-end solution for the micro loans service we offer to the urban under-served, we needed solutions on industrial infrastructure scale to rapidly expand our presence in the country; so, we selected Accenture after receiving bids from others,” said Ramanathan....
IDBI Bank: From DFI To A State Run Bank
It’s not often that Mint Road tells a bank to wake up and smell the coffee. But then you have a first time for everything. K.C. Chakrabarty, deputy governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made it clear “you may have to unlearn and relearn few new things to succeed in the even more competitive business environment that is likely to unfold shortly. It is imperative for the top management and for the employees to work collectively for the progress of your institution”...........
Is your bank charging your credit card for someone else’s dues?
......: If you thought this is an imaginary situation, it is not. This happened for real and is cited in a Reserve Bank of India’s document. Even after several requests to the bank to stop the pesky recovery calls, it seemed the request fell on deaf ears and the customer finally approached the banking ombudsman (BO). The ombudsman investigated the matter and found that the personal details pertaining to the card (in collections) did not tally with those of the complainant.............
ICICI Bank opens skill training academy in Jaipur
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts, ICICI Bank today opened skill training academy to provide vocational training to youth from economically weaker section of the society. The vocational training course will provide sustainable livelihood opportunities to the beneficiaries, ICICI Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Chanda Kochhar said here. “The launch marks the next step in our strategy to promote inclusive growth in India, will train 5,000 youth at nine training centres across the country in the first year of operation,” she said, adding, the academy aims to train 15,000 youth across the country by 2016...............
SBH opens four all-woman branches
..............."Of course, men can also transact their business through such branches, for banking is gender-neutral. It is only with the intention of putting woman customers more at ease we are opening such branches. For instance, a first generation woman entrepreneur starting a small or micro enterprise may find it easier to obtain a loan in such a branch. It does not mean rules would be relaxed, or waived, for women but the hassles may be less in a woman-to-woman transaction," ..............
AP Grameena Bank opens 27 lakh accounts thru biz correspondents
Andhra Pradesh Grameena Vikas bank (APGVB) has, so far, opened 27 lakh basic savings bank deposit accounts through business correspondents (BCs) under the branchless banking model. “All these accounts were opened in the core banking system and commence online transactions on real-time basis,” K. Lakshmana Rao, Chairman, APGVB, said in a release.............
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)