The bank expects to grow loan book by 10 per cent in the current financial year with calibrated exposure to corporate accounts and thrust on the retail segment.
The finance ministry has asked public sector banks (PSBs) to postpone the annual exercise of promoting and transferring their staff in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The advisory issued by the Department of Financial Services (DFS) states that the promotion process has coincided with a spike in Covid-19 cases across the country along with localised lockdowns and an increase in micro-containment zones. As there are cases of bank employees or their family members being hospitalised due to Covid-19, bank, insurance companies and financial institutions must take cognizance of the issue, the advisory issued by DFS said.
At risk of entrenched rough times are sectors like hospitality and those with discretionary spends.
They say that a stimulus package may not be necessary because, unlike last year's total lockdown, public transport, including the railways and airlines, is running and the restrictions on movement are localised and, in some cases, are partial rather than total.
The government can also individually exempt the PSBs, that are to be privatisated from the two Bank Nationalisation Acts. This will bring such lenders under Banking Regulation Act, and make them companies, reports Nikunj Ohri.
The plan was to expand further, add more branches and also eventually become the third bank in India to start a wholly owned subsidiary after Singapore's DBS Bank and State Bank of Mauritius, but those plans never materialised due to lack of scale and rising non-performing assets in the country.
Although such alerts are not compulsory for the banks, this may become the norm now if payments are missed even for a day.
Partial lockdown measures may impact movement of labour & goods, they say.
The idea is to do away with the need for the approval of the Core Group of Secretaries on Divestment for privatisation of companies, especially in non-strategic sectors.
For development finance institution to succeed now, the government must stand like a rock behind it and be patient.
Zero-coupon bonds don't give out interest but are issued at a deep discount to the face value, making it difficult to ascertain the net present value.
RuPay is working on how to increase offers to customers. It is also focused on technology innovation in the card payment system.
The ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has launched a probe into the books of Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company (EARC) following allegations by a whistleblower of fund diversion and irregularities. The whistleblower, Paras Kuhad, a former additional solicitor general of India, had written to the Prime Minister's Office and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Kuhad has alleged that Edelweiss Group and Caisse de depot et placement du Qubec (CDPQ), a Canadian institutional investor, which hold stakes in the ARC, diverted funds and did not adhere to norms while making investments in EARC's instruments. Sources have indicated that a probe has been initiated, but the MCA did not comment on the issue.
The Cabinet has cleared a Bill to set up a government-owned development finance institution (DFI) with initial paid-up capital of Rs 20,000 crore so that it can leverage around Rs 3 trillion from the markets in a few years to provide long-term funds to infrastructure projects as well as for development needs of the country. To put it in perspective, Rs 3 trillion constitutes slightly less than 3 per cent of the Rs 111 trillion to be spent on over 7,000 projects in the National Infrastructure Pipeline from 2019-20 to 2024-25. Besides, the government will give Rs 5,000 crore as grant to the institution, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday told the media after the Cabinet meeting.
The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam) has asked ministries, government departments, and public sector undertakings (PSUs) to send a list of assets that can be monetised under the proposed National Monetisation Pipeline. The list will be used for creation of an asset monetisation dashboard, which will keep a track of such assets. The government, meanwhile, has asked CRISIL to prepare a road map for monetising assets of PSUs and government departments.
Indian corporate are fast tapping the international bonds market to raise funds for their operational expenses even as they reduce their presence in the rupee bond market. As bonds are costlier for companies and investors are more sceptical than the banks, chief financial officers say they are looking at other avenues for raising funds in the coming months as dollar bond rates are lower in the range of 100 to 250 basis points. "For corporate with reasonable credit quality, the Indian bond market has become less of an option from a cost point of view. "In addition, conditions imposed in the Indian bond market by investors post Franklin episode have also become very onerous," said Prabal Banerjee, president-finance of Bajaj group. "Hence very few corporate are looking at the local bond market for resource mobilisation, since both, bank loans and the overseas bond markets are much more attractive," he said.
Senior officials in the MF industry say while the finance ministry and regulators communicate regularly, this is one of the very few instances in many years where an issue between the two has come out into the open.
The bank will now be in a position to resume normal lending activity, including corporate lending, with tightened risk management framework.
Operationalising the ban is being fleshed out: it will entail which cryptocurrencies will be banned and how.
The combined deposits of its Indian operations stood at SGD 9 billion and net advances were at SGD 5.6 billion at the end of December 2020.
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