RBI finds huge diversion of bank funds
New Delhi: The Reserve Bank has detected diversion of funds by over 1,000 companies in the last 10 years mostly from banks like Oriental Bank of Commerce, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank, Indian Bank, SBI and its associates.

OBC topped the list with 125 companies diverting its loans to other than working capital needs, followed by Canara Bank and Andhra Bank (69 each), Indian Bank (63), SBI (41) and its subsidiaries (96).

PSU banks in total accounted for over 70 per cent of the cases where there was fund diversion by corporates.

The incidence of fund diversion was also high in case of some of the private banks like Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank (70), Nedungadi Bank (29), Development Credit Bank (28), South Indian Bank (26), ICICI Bank, Bank of Rajasthan and Lord Krishna Bank (20 each). Private banks accounted for about 25 per cent of the cases of fund diversion.

RBI also detected over 75 such irregularities with foreign banks mostly in case of Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank, Citibank, HSBC and Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi.
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Fresh bids for Kandla Port
New Delhi: The government has decided to re-tender the long-pending Rs 300 crore container terminal project at Kandla Port.

P&O Ports, a subsidiary of Australian ports major, was earlier shortlisted for operating an existing terminal and developing a new terminal on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.

The decision to call for fresh bids was taken following the government deciding to remodel the bidding norms in line with IDFC's guidelines.

P&O Ports has now decided to opt out since the ministry had decided to change the norms for the bidding process. 
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Media Lab seeks World Bank funding
New Delhi: Media Lab Asia, a network of labs modelled on MIT Media Lab to develop technology for the masses, is in talks with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for Rs 5,000 crore grants, to invest in rural infrastructure and services over a period of 10 years.

MLA, which has been registered as a non-profit organisation with seed funding of Rs 65 crore by the government of India, is also in talks with leading foundations like Ford and Rockfeller to finance its research projects.

Over 200 researchers are expected to work on projects like low-cost computing devices, health and rural communications technologies.

MLA has already tied up with IIT Kanpur and Chennai for setting up labs. Its ongoing talks with IIT Mumbai and Delhi for the same are expected to be finalised soon.
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