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 By : Grima Bora  ET India has around 89.5 crore people living in rural areas. The number of ATMs? 5%. According to an RBI data, BY Garima Bora English Edition | E-Paper Tariq / out of 6 lakh villages in India, less than 30,000 villages have ATMs. To ensure nancial inclusion to the last-mile consumers bereft of digital payments or even ATMs at the least, the Reserve Bank of India came up with the Business Correspondents (BC) model in 2006. BCs are retail agents deployed by banks for providing banking services at locations which do not have a bank branch/ATM. These agents can perform various nancial services such as identication of borrowers, collection of money, and preliminary processing of loan applications. However, the grass is still not greener on the rural side. Nearly 10 lakh BCs work in rural and urban underbanked areas on a commission-based model where they get 0.5% of the transaction amount or Rs 15, whichever is lower by the bank on Direct Benet Transfers (DBT). Ana...

Dailyhunt February 23, 2020   China braces for inevitable big hit to economy from coronavirus: Xi China will step up policy adjustments to help cushion the blow on the economy from a coronavirus outbreak that authorities are still trying to control, President Xi Jinping was quoted as saying on Sunday. The situation is showing a positive trend after arduous efforts but there is no room for "weariness and relaxed mentality" among officials, state television quoted him as saying. "At present, the epidemic situation is still severe and complex, and prevention and control work is in the most difficult and critical stage," Xi said. "The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia will inevitably have a relatively big impact on the economy and society," Xi said, adding that the impact would be short-term and controllable. The outbreak is one of the most serious public health crises to confront Chinese leaders in decades. ...

Live Mint January 06, 2020 The RBI on Monday revised the Supervisory Action Framework (SAF) for urban cooperative banks to ensure expeditious resolution of financial stress being faced by some of them. The move comes in the backdrop of the scam in Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank causing distress to over 9 lakh depositors. "Keeping in view the experience gained, it has been decided to further rationalise the SAF to make it more effective in bringing about the desired improvement in the UCBs as also expeditious resolution of UCBs experiencing financial stress," said a RBI notifications. The central bank also added that it will continue to monitor asset quality, profitability and capital/net worth of UCBs under the revised SAF. As per the revised norms, a UCB may be placed under SAF when its net NPAs exceed 6% of its net advances. Depending upon the severity of the stress, the RBI may ask them to curtail their lending powers, among other safeguard...

Money Control News  Published By: Trinity Audio The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) is planning to widen the number of companies included while calculating gross domestic product (GDP), the Financial Express  reported . By amending the Companies Act, the MCA is planning to ask large unlisted companies above a certain threshold to submit results quarterly instead of annually. The National Statistics Office (NSO) currently receives data on 4,000 companies from market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for the MCA21 database. The MCA estimates that the move will help them get information on 30,000-40,000 companies every quarter. Moneycontrol could not independently verify the story. “A larger sample size will also reduce the fluctuations in estimates, especially when the economy goes through a structural change,” an official told the publication. The MCA’s move comes amid criticism of India’s method of calculating GDP, w...

The Telegraph The Reserve Bank of India’s policymakers shocked economists, industry and the Street by deciding to hit the pause button on interest rate cuts after five downward revisions this year. The six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) of the central bank also slashed its growth forecast for this financial year to 5 per cent from 6.1 per cent at the October meeting. The decision to retain the policy rate — the repo — at 5.15 per cent was unanimous and indicated that the central bank was peeved about being second-guessed on its monetary policy moves and had worked up the nerve to resist popular pressure to cut rates once again. It has sent out the strongest signal yet that the burden of reviving the economy through counter-cyclical measures now rests squarely on the Narendra Modi government’s shoulders. “We decided that we could no longer mechanically cut interest rates,” RBI governor Shaktikanta Das told reporters in a post-policy interaction while conceding ...

Hindustan Times December 02, 2019 Published By: Rajeev Jayaswal In order to have a comfortable fiscal position, government needs an average monthly collection of at least Rs 1 lakh crore, and November’s receipts – at Rs 1,03,492 crore – is a sign of a recovery. Collections from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rebounded above the Rs 1 lakh crore benchmark in November, government officials said on Sunday, attributing an increase in voluntary compliance and a government stimulus package for an increase in receipts that had contracted for two consecutive months. According to experts, in order to have a comfortable fiscal position, the government needs an average monthly collection of at least Rs 1 lakh crore, and officials said November’s receipts – at Rs 1,03,492 crore – is a sign of a recovery in the country’s economy, which logged its worst quarter of growth in six years in the three-month period ending September. “This is the eighth time since the inception of GST...

Business Line December 01, 2019 Published By: Ashima Goyal In order to reverse the growth slowdown, we need to look beyond the repo and focus on liquidity-enhancing interventions,  Term premium , Credit risk,  Bank loan rates Inflation targeting is meant to allow policy counter-cyclicality, but it has been implemented as a structural reform. Macropolicy must become counter-cyclical now. The temporary spike in food items driven by prolonged rains and floods can be looked through by a flexible inflation targeter, especially as growth falls much below potential. Core and wholesale price inflation remain much below 4 per cent, and the headline CPI is also likely to come back towards 4 per cent. In no case is it expected to breach the RBI’s target band. In the long run, core inflation affects the household’s inflation expectations more. Raising domestic demand is the priority. There remains room to cut as weak demand reduces the neutral real rate. Moreover, glo...