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The worst performing Asian currency of the year so far hit a new life low of 61.80 rupees per dollar on Tuesday, breezing past a previous low of 61.21 hit on July 8. Central bank intervention helped the rupee recover, but by Wednesday it was sliding once again, to stand around 61.41 by 1.30 p.m.
In mid-March this year, the finance ministry asked state-run banks to review their gold loan portfolio for the two-year period between January 1, 2022, and January 31, 2024. This business had grown at a fast clip. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data has it that it grew 15 per cent to Rs 1 trillion in FY24. Now, in recent times, any kind of exuberance in financial services has seen the authorities swoop down - be it pushing the lines on governance or unsecured credit.
The RBI has hiked repo or short-term lending rate up by 0.25 pc to 7.75 pc.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Monday trimmed India's economic growth estimates by 30 basis points to 7.1 per cent for the current fiscal, while global financial services giant Morgan Stanley downgraded its GDP growth forecast for the current fiscal to 7.3 per cent from the earlier 7.7 per cent.
The Reserve Bank on Monday barred IIFL Finance Ltd from disbursing gold loans, with immediate effect following multiple supervisory concerns, including serious deviations in assaying and certifying the purity of the yellow metal. A leading financial services provider, IIFL Finance offers a range of loans and mortgages. The latest directions from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) pertain to only the gold loan business.
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KC Chakrabarty who was appointed as RBI deputy governor in 2009, is considered frank with his views.
HDFC Bank, the country's largest private-sector lender, lost to competition wholesale loans of around Rs 50,000 crore after it increased interest rates in May, said Chief Financial Officer Srinivasan Vaidyanathan in an analyst call. "There were some customers who were offered lower rates by other market participants. "But we decided not to cut back on our rates," he said while addressing analysts after the announcement of the bank's Q1 earnings.
Customers who possess gold jewellery but are either being denied a personal loan or are being asked for a high interest rate due to their poor credit profile may consider a gold loan.
While banks are not as exposed as the corporate sector during the initial stage of the pandemic, the strain on lenders could ultimately be profound. Banks face a second-order hit compared with the corporate and household sectors.
Foreign investors have pulled over Rs 6,400 crore from the Indian equity market in the first four trading sessions of the ongoing month when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and US Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Given the headwinds in terms of elevated crude prices, inflation, tight monetary policy among others, FPIs' flows in India are expected to remain volatile in the near term, Shrikant Chouhan, Head - Equity Research (Retail), Kotak Securities, said. Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) remained net sellers for seven months to April 2022, withdrawing a massive amount of over Rs 1.65 lakh crore from equities. This was largely on the back of anticipation of a rate hike by the US Federal Reserve and due to the deteriorating geopolitical environment following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the recent interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank was not surprising for her but the timing was, asserting that the rising cost of funds will not impact the government's planned infrastructure investments. For the first time since August 2018, RBI had on May 4 delivered a blunt 40 basis points increase in key repo rate to 4.40 per cent, and also hiked the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points to 4.5 per cent after an unscheduled meeting of the rate setting panel, citing increased inflation pressures following the Ukraine war and the resultant spike in crude oil prices. Retail inflation printed at 6.9 per cent in March and the April reading is forecast to top 7.7 per cent.
BofA-ML said the liquidity deficit is running higher than the forecasts because the RBI has suspended its bond buybacks or open market operations.
'The structural story of India is a multi-decadal story.' 'One should stay invested in that story and avoid reacting to what is happening globally.'
CII suggested the policy measures required to ease the tight liquidity situation by cutting CRR by at least 50 basis points.
This is a good opportunity for long-term investors to pick quality small and midcap stocks at reasonable valuations.
Rising oil prices and diminishing cash pile to limit capacity in 2018-19
The finance ministry has short listed 11 PSUs for a possible buyback of shares in the ongoing financial year
The year 2015 is likely to see lower rates to support growth and the Reserve Bank is expected to cut key policy rates by 0.25 per cent in February's monetary policy review meet, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report.
These are the highlights of the seventh bi-monthly monetary policy statement for 2019-20 by the RBI amid COVID-19 pandemic:
Better supply management and check on hoarding should be able to prevent food price spikes
The Reserve Bank of India has already reduced the policy rate by a total of 75 basis points, or 0.75 per cent, since January.
RBI said the outlook for economic growth for 2016-17 has turned uncertain after the unexpected loss of momentum by 50 basis points in Q2 and the effects of the withdrawal of banned notes
Economic growth has slipped to a six-year low of 5 per cent for the June quarter and is expected to turn in lower than that in the September quarter. Lack of consumption is seen as one of the key factors pulling down growth.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Thursday said financial inclusion will continue to be a "policy priority" for the central bank to make the post-pandemic recovery more equitable and sustainable. The Reserve Bank of India will very soon be coming out with the first financial inclusion index, which will assess progress in terms of access, usage and quality, Das said, while speaking at the Economic Times Financial Inclusion Summit. It is the responsibility of all stakeholders to ensure that the financial ecosystem (including the digital medium) is inclusive and capable of effectively addressing risks like mis-selling, cybersecurity, data privacy and promoting trust in the financial system through appropriate financial education and awareness, he added.
Joy Thomas stated that one large account -- HDIL -- was the sole reason for the present crisis that led to the regulatory action on Tuesday when Reserve Bank of India superseded its management and placed it under an administrator for the next six months.
For now, the concerns over bad loans have taken a back seat; a bigger challenge for the banking community is credit growth, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
India's current account deficit is expected to deteriorate in the current fiscal on account of costlier imports and tepid merchandise exports, according to the Finance Ministry's monthly economic review. The review released on Thursday by the ministry also said that global headwinds would continue to pose a downside risk to growth as crude oil and edibles, which have driven inflation in India, remain major imported components in the consumption basket. For the present, it said, "their global prices have softened, as fears of recession have dampened prices somewhat. This would weaken inflationary pressures in India and rein in inflation."
The unexpected interest rate hike by the RBI on Wednesday will have the banking system on average making a 10-15 bps gains on the yields, with private banks making larger gains as 57 per cent of their loans are linked to external benchmark rate and 40 per cent to the marginal cost of lending rates, as per a report. Stating that lenders and borrowers will face volatile times with the Reserve Bank raising the repo rate by 40 bps to 4.40 per cent and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 50 bps on May 4 in an off-cycle policy move, India Ratings said the market rates had already been moving higher before the move. The 364-day T-bills have moved up 120 bps and 10-year G-sec by 140 bps since May 2020, when the repo rate was cut to a record 4 per cent, which led to an expectation of a faster and sharper rise in interest rates in the system but the central bank stayed the course to support the fragile economy battered by the pandemic.
A day after the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) Monetary Policy Committee hiked the policy repo rate by 50 basis points (bps), several commercial banks, including ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda, raised their external benchmark-linked loan rates by an equal amount on Thursday. HDFC, the country's largest mortgage lender, too, increased its interest rates on housing loans by another 50 bps. In total, it has raised rates by 85 bps since May 4, when the RBI had increased the repo rate by 40 bps in an off-cycle meeting.
Vedanta Limited (Vedanta) helping its parent and group holding company Vedanta Resources to deleverage its balance sheet has started to strain its balance sheet. Vedanta's gross debt (consolidated) was up 24.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in FY23 and reached a six-year high of Rs 66,628 crore by the end of March. Similarly, its net debt went up 20.3 per cent YoY to Rs 45,706 crore at the end of FY23, up from Rs 38,228 crore a year ago; it was the highest since FY20.
That's the only way to convince those who have money to return to the bank fold, ditching other asset classes, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
On July 15, the Reserve Bank put in place measures to restore stability in the foreign exchange market, including raising the Marginal Standing Facility and bank rates to 10.25 per cent and restricting access by way of repos to Rs 75,000 crore (Rs 750 billion).
The gains will be gradual as the measure will be executed over 12 months or so.
Any liquid money that gold replaces for CRR or SLR compliance will allow banks to use this 'extra' cash for lending to borrowers
The chances of a rate cut in September have risen.
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BSE auto index surged 2%, capital goods, healthcare and oil & gas indices also up.
The non-food component in the price basket will continue to keep inflation at a high level and result in a "long pause" in interest rates, a foreign bank said on Wednesday. The central bank is likely to pare the pandemic-driven emergency response as well, the report by Singaporean lender DBS said. It can be noted that the high inflation driven by the food prices has forced the RBI to go for a status quo in rates for the three consecutive reviews of the bi-monthly policy meetings, even as growth continues to be in the negative territory.
Aditya Birla Nuvo gets board's nod, Videocon submits application.
Battling a sharp surge in inflation, the Reserve Bank is all for a smooth monetary policy response and the desire to have smaller hikes led it to tighten the policy in an off-schedule meet, a source said on Thursday. Inflation has been massively impacted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and will in due course also reflect the dent caused by Indonesia banning palm oil exports, the source aware of central bank thinking said, indicating that there was no other option but to respond. "The idea is to have a smooth policy response, not to put in large cold turkey responses," the source said, making it clear that the preference is for smaller magnitude responses and not larger ones.
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