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Rupee dips - securities recover
Mumbai: The rupee weakened further against the dollar on Wednesday edging down to end at 43.58/59, weaker than Tuesday's close of 43.5725.

Forwards market: The 12-month premium closed at 1.28 per cent (1.32) and the 6-month at 1.45 per cent (1.49).

G-Secs: The 7.27-per cent 8-year 2013 paper, which is currently active, ended the day at Rs101.38 (7.04 per cent), up from yesterday's cut off of Rs101.26. The 7.38-per cent 10-year 2015 benchmark paper was dealt at Rs101.85 (7.12 per cent YTM) against Tuesday's level of Rs102.22 (7.068 per cent YTM). The 7.55-per cent 5-year 2010 paper closed at Rs103.45/50 (6.70 per cent YTM).

Call rates: The inter bank rates were between 5-5.10 per cent (5 per cent).

CBLO market: 217 trades, in the rate range of 4.95-5.35 per cent aggregating Rs9,480.65 crore, were realised.
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RBI: Forex reserves enough to meet 14 months' imports
Mumbai: According to the RBI's report on Foreign Exchange Reserves, released on Wednesday, the country's forex reserves were adequate to meet 14.3 months imports as on March 2005, as against 17 months of import on March 2004.

The import cover of reserves is a traditional indicator of reserve adequacy.

The ratio of short-term debt to foreign exchange reserves increased to 5.3 per cent for March 2005, from 4.2 per cent in March 2004.

The ratio of volatile capital flows (defined to include cumulative portfolio inflows and short term debt) to reserves increased to 36.8 per cent from 30.6 per cent, during the same period.

The foreign exchange reserves are invested in multi-currency and multi-market portfolios. As on March 2005, out of the total foreign currency assets of $135.6 billion, $36.8 billion were invested in securities ($35.02 billion), $65.1 billion deposited with other central banks and Bank of International Settlement ($45.8 billion) and $33.6 billion were in the form of deposits with foreign commercial banks ($26.5 billion). In 2003, the International Monetary Fund designated India as a creditor under its Financial Transaction Plan (FTP).

Under this, India extended Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 5 million to Burundi in March-May 2003, SDR 43 million to Indonesia in December 2003, SDR 61 million to Uruguay, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka in 2004-05.

Thus, the total quantum of the country's contribution under FTP was SDR 459 million at end-March 2005, the report said.
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RBI sets up Financial Markets Dept. under Dr. Rakesh Mohan
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India has decided to closely track the financial markets and towards this end has set up a separate department called Financial Markets Department (FMD).

The FMD will be under Dr Rakesh Mohan, who took over as Deputy Governor of the RBI on July 2.

Dr Mohan, who has been appointed for five years, will also be in charge of the Monetary Policy Department, which was looked after by the Deputy Governor, Ms Shyamala Gopinath. Dr Mohan is the fourth Deputy Governor. The other two are Ms K.J. Udeshi and Mr V. Leeladhar.

The constitution of the new department is aimed at moving towards a functional separation between debt management and monetary operations. It will handle open market operations, liquidity adjustment facility, standing liquidity facilities, and market stabilisation scheme.

The FMD will also be responsible for regulation and development of money market instruments and monitoring of Government securities and forex markets.

In due course, the Department's functions would cover the RBI's operations in the domestic foreign exchange market to achieve the desired integration in the apex bank's conduct of monetary operations, said a release.

As Deputy Governor, Dr Mohan will also look after the Department of Statistical Analysis and Computer Services, the Department of Economic Analysis and Policy, and the Secretary's Department, apart from co-ordination work.

Dr Mohan, who was earlier appointed as Deputy Governor of the RBI for three years from September 2002, relinquished the post in October 2004 when he was appointed Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs.
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RBI: 91-day T-bill bids partly accepted
Mumbai: The RBI has said that the auction of the 91-day Treasury bill on Wednesday received bids for the notified amount, but not all the bids were accepted. However, the 364-day Treasury bill received full subscription, according to an RBI press release.

The notified amount for the 91-day Treasury bill was Rs2,000 crore.

The central bank received 49 competitive bids, amounting to Rs2,236 crore. Of these, RBI accepted 24 bids amounting to Rs697.50 crore. The cut-off price and the weighted average price was Rs98.67.

The RBI also received one non-competitive bid, amounting to Rs400 crore, which was accepted. The partial allotment was 100 per cent.

In the case of 364-day Treasury bill, the notified amount was Rs2,000 crore. The RBI received 53 competitive bids, amounting to Rs4,046 crore. Of these, the RBI accepted 28 bids. The cut-off price was Rs94.61. The partial allotment percentage amounted to 27.94 per cent from 6 bids. The weighted average price was Rs94.61.

The auctions of the 7.27-Government Stock 2013 and the 10.25-Government Stock 2021 were oversubscribed on Tuesday.

For the 7.27 paper the notified amount was Rs6,000 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) received 320 competitive bids amounting to Rs11,357.68 crore. The cut-off price was Rs101.26 (7.03 per cent YTM). The RBI accepted 180 bids, amounting to Rs5960.49 crore.

The amount of underwriting accepted from primary dealers was Rs2,510 crore. The weighted average price was Rs101.37.

The RBI also received 28 non-competitive bids, amounting Rs39.51 crore.

For the 10.25 paper the notified amount was Rs4,000 crore. The RBI received 260 competitive bids amounting to Rs8,183.52 crore. The cut-off price was Rs124.57 (7.56 per cent YTM). The RBI accepted 130 bids amounting to Rs3,969.84 crore.

The amount of underwriting accepted from primary dealers was Rs2,995 crore. The weighted average price was Rs126.36.

The RBI also received 28 non-competitive bids amounting to Rs30.16 crore.
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SBM mulling Rs.15 crore tier-II capital issue
Hyderabad: The State Bank of Mysore (SBM) plans to augment its capital-to-risk assets ratio (CRAR) and is considering plans to raise funds of around Rs150 crore under tier-II capital during this fiscal. However, the bank was yet to decide whether to raise the funds in one or more tranches, officials have said.

Having achieved a growth of 22.86 per cent in deposits at Rs13,342 crore and 37.58 per cent in advances at Rs9,124 crore, the bank targets an aggregate business of Rs5,200 crore during the current fiscal - a growth of over 23 per cent.

Working in synergy with the SBI group, SBM will participate in several infrastructure, healthcare and core sector projects.

The bank finds major opportunities in the areas of project finance and loan syndication.
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Central Bank of India centralizes banking functions
New Delhi: The Central Bank of India has implemented the Bancs core-banking platform from Australia's Financial Network Services in a move to further centralize the bank's entire banking system.

The roll out at the bank, which was carried out by Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), follows implementations of the platform at the State Bank of India and Indian Bank over the past year.

TCS hopes to follow up the initial pilot deployment at Central Bank of India (TCS) by converting another 25 branches within the next six months.

FNS's Bancs platform beat rival offerings from IT firms Infosys, Hewlett-Packard, I-flex and IBM.

The Central Bank of India intends to automate 1000 branches and provide delivery channels for Internet, telephone and mobile banking services. TCS is also building a new data centre and disaster recovery centre, and has agreed to provide facilities management services for the bank over the next five years.

"The Centralised Bancs Core Banking System will result in efficient and personalized customer service, 24x7 banking through multiple delivery channels, faster time-to-market for new banking products and superior relationship management at the bank," said TCS CEO S. Ramadorai. "It will also prepare the banking group to meet the dynamically changing Indian banking environment."

Financial Network Services said the platform also allows fees to be centrally monitored, interest rates to be easily changed and reports to be generated centrally.
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Oriental Insurance net up at Rs.330 crore
New Delhi: The State-owned Oriental Insurance Company has earned a net profit of Rs330.52 crore on a premium income of Rs2,218.02 crore during 2004-05 as against Rs316.47 crore earned on a premium of Rs2,033 crore in 2003-04.

The company has shown good result despite incurring a huge loss of Rs604 crore under third party insurance.

Despite the trend of increasing claims, the company has aimed to improve its performance in 2005-06. The general insurer is aiming at about 14% growth in business by increasing its net premium collection to Rs3,439 crore in 2005-06.
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IBM to supply tech infrastructure to Yes Bank
Chennai: The Yes Bank has tied up with IBM to build an "on demand" technology infrastructure, within which IBM will provide complete information technology infrastructure, including servers, storage and desktops as well as IBM middleware.

IBM and Yes Bank officials said that the bank would run its core banking applications on IBM Power5 based servers as database servers and xSeries application servers. The cash management and treasury applications will also run on IBM server clusters.
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IBM bags Rs.56 crore IDBI contract
Mumbai: IDBI Ltd has awarded a Rs56-crore contract to IBM Global Services to consolidate its IT infrastructure, including building and providing service support for a data centre and a disaster recovery site, according to a release from the corporation.

The data centre will be located in Navi Mumbai and will house IDBI's entire IT infrastructure.

The disaster recovery site, located in Chennai, is designed to be able to restore systems in less than 24 hours, in the event of natural or unnatural disaster.

The contract is for a period of five years.
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Infosys takes risk cover for Rs.4,600 crore
Bangalore: Infosys Technologies Ltd has placed its risk cover with the public sector National Insurance Company of India Ltd (NIC) for a sum assured of close to Rs4,600 crore or over $1 billion.

Sources at Infosys said that the company paid an estimated premium of about Rs10 crore. This was likely to increase as the company was in an "expansion mode," the sources added. The risk cover comprised a business interruption cover and a group medical cover for an estimated 24,000 families, industry sources said.

This is for the second year in succession that public sector NICL has bagged the prestigious account. NICL will be the lead insurer having an estimated share of 80 per cent of the risk cover, while the remaining 20 per cent would be by ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd.

Last year, NIC's co-insurers included both ICICI Lombard and Bajaj Allianz, on a 60:25:15 basis.

The business interruption cover for Rs4,600 crore included both fire and loss of profit, the sources said. The sum assured for fire losses was pegged at around Rs2,200 crore. The loss of profits cover was about Rs2,400 crore. This is among the largest risk covers taken by corporate India.

Sources said that NIC insurers had taken full reinsurance support for the cover to restrict their own liabilities. Under the present guidelines of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, 20 per cent of the reinsurance is to be ceded to the national re-insurer General Insurance Corporation (GIC). Global re-insurers have covered the remaining component of the asset risk.
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