SBI, Maruti team up to tap car market
Hyderabad: State Bank of India (SBI) and Maruti Udyog Ltd have announced a joint initiative aimed at making car finance affordable to middle and lower middle class customers. Customers will now have transparent car finance involving no hidden charges and pre-closure penalties, and also get the dealers' margins, S.K. Bhattacharya, chief general manager, SBI, told newspersons. "It will help both the bank and Maruti to aggressively tap the Andhra Pradesh market," he said. SBI offers finance facility even for lifetime tax, insurance and accessories of the vehicle.
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Nepal bans notes of Rs 1,000 denomination
New Delhi: Possession of Indian currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination has been prohibited in Nepal. The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has now directed its commissionerates to display notices about the new provision of Nepalese law at airports and land customs stations. Besides prohibiting sale and purchase within Nepal of Indian currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination, the Nepal Government has also placed a ban on import into/export from Nepal of currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination.
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All regulatory exemptions to go — Co-op banks to come under RBI control
New Delhi: The Government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have decided to do away with the entire set of regulatory exemption granted to co-operative banks under the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. Moving towards a uniform regulatory environment for all types of banking entities, the ministry of finance and the RBI have arrived at consensus to either scrap the separate Chapter V of the Act titled `Application of the Act to Co-operative Banks' or drastically amend it to remove all the major exemptions
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States want to buy back high-coupon loans — RBI, Centre moved for approval, IT reliefs
Bangalore: A clutch of States has sought the Reserve Bank of India's approval for buying back high-coupon State Development Loans (SDL). These securities are held by the banks as part of their statutory liquidity ratio and are sovereign guaranteed. The States have sought the approval even as the Centre's buy-back programme is faced with resistance from the public sector banks. Among the States which have made this proposal includes Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. But these were not the only States, sources said. Almost all the States have sought the RBI's approval for this buy-back programme. The States want the premature redemption to be structured on the same lines as the Central Government's two-tranche bonds buy-back amounting to Rs 82,000 crore.
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Foreign banks reluctant to set up overseas units
New Delhi: Offshore banking units (OBUs) are getting popular among Indian banks as many of them queue-up to establish such units in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) of the country. While Indian banks have expressed enthusiasm, the foreign banks have been seemingly reluctant and very few applications have reached the regulator from the branches of such banks in India.
Despite a special income-tax regime for OBUs, granted at the time of amendments to the Finance Bill 2003, the response from foreign banks are not very overwhelming, according to officials here.
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