With growing vulnerability to an adverse business environment and pressure from stressed assets, global rating agency Fitch on Friday said it would step up scrutiny of three public sector banks (PSBs) — Punjab National Bank (PNB), IDBI Bank and Canara Bank. Indian banks, especially PSBs, will see more of a rise in bad loans and restructured assets in the next 12 to 18 months due to a long spell of economic slowdown, banking sector analysts with Fitch Analytics said in a conference call. The agency is slated to release a report on the Indian banking system early next week....
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, September 28, 2013
Strong measures
.......Several viewpoints have been floated since the RBI announced this ban, largely speculating on a fall in real estate prices as a consequence. It has been opined that developers’ holding power will be significantly reduce, forcing them to reduce prices. This analysis of the situation is based on the currently high levels of inventory that developers are saddled with, especially in larger cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi...............
HC tells SBI to pay 50k over ‘frivolous’ petition
.....Justice Rekha Sondurbaldota dismissed a petition by SBI challenging Pune city civil court’s order issuing summons
to its chairman and 17 senior officers in a suit filed by S S Gadokhe
& Sons, Engineers and Contractors, which sought damages of more than
Rs 4.3 crore.............
Red - TOI
RBI ban: Cards stacked against retailers
.......If the RBI can bar zero-interest schemes in retail, why is not such a policy applicable to the banking sector, asks Mohandas, who had worked with public interest litigants. The authorities had given green signal to sharia-compliant financing in Kerala recently, which forbids interest regime.
RBI asks banks to bear the cost of deploying e-KYC of Aadhaar
In yet another example of burdening bank customers, RBI has asked banks to deploy infrastructure at own cost for using UIDAI’s Aadhaar biometric authentication for KYC. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that Aadhaar number from Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is not necessary for essential services, several government agencies are enforcing it on helpless citizens. Going a step further the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is asking banks to bear the cost for deploying electronic-know your customer (e-KYC) launched by UIDAI...........
Banks to bear card fraud cost in absence of security features
..."It has been decided not to grant any further extension of time. Accordingly, banks not complying with the requirements shall compensate loss, if any, incurred by the card holder using card at POS (points of sale) terminals not adhering to the mandated standards," RBI said in a notification. In this context, it said, since the card holder would be approaching the card issuing bank for any fraudulent POS transaction in India which have occurred after September 30, 2013), the bank should claim the amount paid by it to the customer from the respective bank which have acquired the POS transaction in question......
State Bank to expand reach of cash deposit machines to woo retail money
........“Approximately 10 per cent of the economy is cash with people. So, if a part of that cash comes back into the system, I think, that itself puts more resources with the banks and the country would benefit,” said Pratip Chaudhuri, SBI Chairman, .............
New ATMs to double up as branches
.....ATM makers are targeting new banks with their latest offering - a machine that virtually doubles up as a branch. The machine can count notes and sniff out the fake ones while accepting deposits, and use the same notes for withdrawals. The machine can perform cheque truncation - the process of settling cheque payments on the basis of cheque images. The ATM also has a virtual teller where an executive will videoconference from the bank's call centre and try and sell account holders mutual funds and insurance when customers withdraw funds. ..........
MobiKwik Launches Mobile Wallet
...........What’s interesting here is that Mobkwik is transitioning its user base from a closed wallet to a semi-closed wallet. Singh clarified that there are no specific RBI guidelines which prevent this transition, and frankly, we don’t see why there should be – consumers are getting the opportunity to use their money to pay for more goods and service, instead of being restricted to a single merchants offerings. The semi-closed prepaid payments wallet allows customers to add up to Rs 50,000 by credit or debit card, Internet banking or cash cards. MobiKwik has apps for Android, Apple, J2ME and Blackberry, and transactions are also possible via their website, SMS. The company is planning to launch a Windows App............
Aadhaar, fingerprint scan enough to open bank a/c
A
few weeks after RBI governor Raghuram Rajan stressed on building credit
histories of individuals based on the Aadhaar number, one bank has
introduced unique identity-based eKYC for opening loan and savings
accounts. Axis Bank, which is using payment company Visa’s
network to access Aadhaar database, will introduce the eKYC facility in
around 25 branches next week. The branches will open loan and deposit
accounts based on the Aadhaar number and fingerprints instead of proof
of address and proof of identity..........
Read - TOI
Read - TOI
Par panel against corporates getting bank licences
...The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, headed by former finance minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, finalised its report on the new bank licences at its meeting here Friday. According to sources, the most of members opposed the bank licences going to corporate houses and the same concerns have been reflected in the report which will be submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar soon. The members felt that since there is no such practice to give bank licences to corporate houses anywhere in the world, India should not be an exception.........
‘Govt won’t be kind to wilful defaulters’
..Non-performing
assets (NPAs) are something that nobody would like to encourage, and
certainly we are not interested in encouraging them or in supporting
them or holding out a fig leaf of an apology on behalf of NPAs. There
are reasons why they suddenly appear to have grown. We have created a
system of system-based NPAs, which means the system itself throws up
NPAs. Now that system-generated NPAs have started coming out, some
balance sheets have taken a hit..............
FM backs priority sector tag for exports
Finance
minister P Chidambaram has said that his ministry supported the demand
for including exports under priority sector finance and will take up the
matter with the Reserve Bank of India. Priority sector refers
to the business activity identified by the regulator with mandatory
lending targets. Banks not meeting the targets have to invest in
low-yielding government funds for that sector......
Read - TOI
Read - TOI
Decoding Rajan’s Frankfurt speech: Why central banks fuel bubbles
....Rajan in his Frankfurt speech for a change agreed with Greenspan. As he said “We should wonder whether lower and lower interest rates are in fact part of the problem, I say I don’t know.” It is easy to conclude from the statements of Greenspan as well Rajan that central bank governors do understand the perils of printing money to keep interest rates low. Given that why are they still continuing to print money?............
RBI governor says forex reserves comfortable
.......Rajan, who was speaking at a seminar in Frankfurt, reiterated the policy stance of the central bank was “neutral” at this point in time, though he said high and persistent retail price inflation was a concern. “At this point, we are neutral, we will see how things develop,” he said when asked about the central bank’s policy stance. The RBI chief added inflation was not just due to higher food prices. “Unfortunately, there is still some inflation when you strip out the effects of food and energy. Therefore, it is not just food, it’s other factors also, which are driving inflation,” Rajan told reporters on the sidelines of the conference............
Manish Chokhani backs RBI governor; says India story intact
Just for the near-term talking about interest rates how did you read the recent move from Reserve Bank of India ? There was a lot of optimism that maybe Raghuram Rajan’s rein will mark the beginning of softer interest rates, something which a lot of people think is a perquisite for the kind of bull market that we saw few years back. Do you get the sense that we will probably have to live with fairly high interest rates for a protracted period of time even from here?.............
Mamata unhappy with Rajan Committee Report
..........."I am deeply shocked and anguished by the outright and discriminatory approach of the Central Government towards Bengal in entertaining the Raghuram Rajan Committee Report," Mamata stated on her official Facebook page............
Rajan panel wasn't unanimous in framing underdevelopment index
There is some consolation for Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi: Not everyone in a panel headed by Reserve Bank of India Governor and former chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan had favoured the inclusion of Gujarat in the list of less developed states........
Raghuram Rajan Committee report on states 'least developed'
.......Had this come to me as a paper submitted for publication and sent to me for "refereeing”, I would have sent it back, asking for substantial revisions. It is a least developed report. And the tragedy is that, unlike a journal paper, there will be serious discussions around it.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Deutsche Bank award for ‘financial economist’ Raghuram Rajan
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