Passengers in 200 railway stations across India will soon be able to recharge their mobiles, pay electricity bills, fill up Aadhaar and Pan card forms and even file taxes with help from Common Service Centre (CSC) kiosks to be set up by RailTel. The scheme has been operationalised in partnership with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited' (CSC-SPV) and the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, RailTel said in a statement. The kiosks will be run by village level entrepreneurs (VLEs).
The likely relaxation, however, will not apply to foreign banks.
ICICI Bank has identified rural credit as the next growth platform for which it had decided to leverage the role of micro-credit organisations.
India appears poised to sustain its growth in a more durable way than before with the economy carrying the momentum from FY23 into the current fiscal year, the Annual Economic Review for 2022-23 released by the finance ministry on Thursday said. However, the report cautioned that escalation of geopolitical stress, enhanced volatility in global financial systems, sharp price correction in global stock markets, a high magnitude of El-Nino impact, and modest trade activity and FDI inflows, are factors that could constrain the pace of growth. "Should these developments deepen and dampen growth in the subsequent quarters, the external sector may challenge India's growth outlook for FY24," the finance ministry said.
On reforms in pipeline, she said the government is for universal right to minimum wages and wants to remove regional disparity through a national floor wage.
The government plans to transfer all subsidies including food, fertiliser and kerosene, potentially taking direct payments to more than $60 billion.
'But he was very quick and did a very stylish adab.' 'Of course, I didn't expect him to hug.'
Retail inflation declined to an 18-month low of 4.7 per cent in April mainly due to falling prices of vegetables, oils and fats, and came closer to Reserve Bank's target of 4 per cent, showed government data released Friday. It was for the second month in a row that Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation remained within the RBI's comfort zone of below 6 per cent. The government has tasked the central bank to ensure retail inflation remains at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side.
'The market will focus on the fact that India does have strong earnings growth this year.'
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According to the survey which drew responses from existing banks, NBFCs, corporate and industrial houses and other stakeholders, the setting up of new banks is considered significant in view of the fact that only 35 per cent of the country's population have formal bank accounts as compared to an average of 41 per cent in other developing economies.
Jean Dreze, who is also member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, Ritika Khera and Anirban Kar - all from the Delhi School of Economics -- have pointed out that though bank payment of wages is seen as a magic solution to delayed payment and non-payment of wages under the Rs 25,000-crore (Rs 250-billion) scheme, making bank payments mandatory is a step taken without necessary precautions.
There have been several positive signals in Bharti Airtel with revenue market share (RMS) growth, better visibility of profits from Africa, and enough free cash flow to pursue deleveraging. Airtel's 4G and 5G data subscriber net additions were 5.6 million in Q1FY24, and 24.5 million in the last 12 months. Airtel currently has 230 million data subscribers on 4G/5G, which is about 70 per cent penetration of its base of 339 million subscribers.
It is likely he will rope in an international ATM manufacturer as a strategic partner with equity stake.
Despite its admirable competence and proven track record, the RBI doesn't have the capacity to supervise an economy that's growing so fast and becoming larger by the year, points out T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
'RuPay' is developed by National Payments Corporation of India.
The RBI reminded that the primary role of these banks is to lend for activities related to agriculture and rural development. The central bank said it has come to its notice that certain state cooperative and central cooperative banks have extended finance to the sector.
The government has asked the Indian Banks' Association to make sure that IDBI Bank's wages are on a par with other banks.
Extreme poverty in India declined by 12.3 percentage points between 2011 and 2019, with rural areas doing better than urban centres, according to a working paper of the World Bank. India has not released a new household consumption survey since the NSS from 2011. By extension, the country has not released any official estimates of poverty and inequality for over a decade now, added the paper co-authored by economists Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide.
'The Fed rate will peak in the range of 5.1-5.3 per cent during the second quarter of CY23 and will most likely stay there for a while before rate cuts start in CY24.'
Five-time MLA Parshottam Solanki, who is also known as 'Bhai' among his followers, has been winning Bhavnagar-Rural with a comfortable margin.
Disgruntled executives are already pinning hopes on the new banks, too.
'We cannot leave our entire unorganised sector to the vagaries of market forces.'
India's poverty has started to decline due to efforts of the BJP-led government, Modi said.
'Unless she joins one of the coalitions, she has a bleak future.' 'The NDA option is suicidal, but INDIA could help her.'
A way to ensure good growth as private banks find organic growth tough.
Physical KYC takes anywhere between two to five working days to get done, V-KYC, only a few minutes.
The World Bank has approved a whopping $112.56 million development loan for Chhattisgarh, for improving the living standards of thousands of households in the rural areas of the state.\n\n\n\n
Seven World Bank-sponsored projects, worth about Rs 22,426 crore (Rs 224.26 billion), are being implemented across the country to improve delivery in centrally-funded schemes and meet other objectives, the government said on Wednesday.
India's rural employment guarantee programme MNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest public works programme, providing social security net to almost 15 per cent of the country's population, the World Bank has said.
'We expect growth to increase in 2017, after this brief period associated with the change in notes.'
Analysts say there is still no visibility of earnings improvement.
"In view of contracting global demand, we have to focus on domestic demand by stimulating demand in rural areas and labour intensive sectors," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is holding charge of the finance portfolio, said. "We must support the development of those sections which immediately boost growth and throw up employment opportunities." Sectors that specifically sought enhancement of bank credit were infrastructure, rural credit, consumer credit, MSME.
Financial inclusion has been on the top of the govt's top agenda.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday said customs duty cut on a number of items has been advanced, including edible oils, to curb high inflation.
The strike notices were given by workers' unions of various sectors such as coal, steel, oil, telecom, postal, income tax, copper, banks and insurance.
There will be a lot to repair and rejuvenate -- if that opportunity even presents itself, warns Rathin Roy.
According to reports, public transport and banking services remain partly disrupted for the second day in some states.
RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan expressed anguish at the banks' reluctance to pass on benefits of the earlier rate cuts.
To push digital transactions in rural and semi-urban areas, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday issued a framework allowing offline payments up to Rs 200 per transaction, subject to an overall limit of Rs 2,000. An offline digital payment means a transaction that does not require internet or telecom connectivity. Under the offline mode, payments can be carried out face-to-face (proximity mode) using any channel or instrument like cards, wallets, and mobile devices.
