Rupee slips
Mumbai: The rupee slid to another low against the dollar ending at 46.13.

Forwards: The six-month premia closed at 1.15 per cent (1.26 per cent) and the 12-month at 1.25 per cent (1.32 per cent).

G-Secs: The 9.39-5 year-2011 ended at Rs106.97 (7.69 per cent YTM), against the previous close at Rs107.09 (7.66 per cent YTM). The 7.59 per cent - 10 year-2016 paper closed at 96.5 (8.11 per cent), slightly higher than Friday's Rs96.60 (8.10 per cent YTM).

Call rates: The inter bank rates call rates remained unchanged between 5.75 and 5.85 per cent.

Reverse repo: In the first one-day reverse repo auction under LAF, the Reserve Bank of India received and accepted 23 bids amounting to Rs20,705 crore and in the second one-day reverse repo auction, 33 bids for Rs19,115 crore. There were no repo bids.

CBLO: The CBLO markets saw 244 trades aggregating to Rs13,947.90 crore in the 5.59-5.68 per cent range.
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OIDB defers plan to offer working capital loans
New Delhi: Oil companies have been blocked from borrowing short-term working capital loans from the Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB), with the Board putting on hold any decision to offer such loans.

Oil companies, suffering high levels of under-recoveries due to soaring international crude prices, had requested the petroleum ministry to allow them to borrow short-term working capital from the OIDB as their bank loans credit limits were on the verge of exhaustion. The petroleum ministry in turn had approached the finance ministry to consider allowing oil companies to borrow capital from the OIDB.

The finance ministry, while opposing the proposal to permit the oil companies to tap the OIDB for improving their liquidity, had, however, left it up to the OIDB to take a final decision. The OIDB board, which met recently, took a decision of not pursuing the issue.

According to the finance ministry, the oil companies may not need these short-term loans following an integrated package comprising price hike, oil bonds, and customs duty reduction announced by the Government on June 5. This measure would now enable the companies to reduce their under- realisations.

The ministry also feels that the OIDB funds should be used for projects and building strategic reserves, and not to meet working capital requirements of oil companies.
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BoI scheme to loan gold directly to goldsmiths
Mumbai: The Bank of India (BoI) has launched a new scheme through which gold will be loaned directly to jewellery manufacturers.

BoI is one of the nominated banks for the import of gold. The proposed scheme, Star Swarnakar Suvidha Scheme, will provide finance to gold smiths, provide skill development programme in collaboration with SIDBI and also tie-up with retailers for the sale of gold jewellery.

Jewellery manufacturers and jewellery traders have so far been procuring gold from MMTC, incurring additional burden on bank guarantee commission, as their bankers were not authorised to import gold directly. Through this scheme, BoI can now offer them gold at competitive prices and save them the three per cent commission, a bank release has said. The bank will launch this scheme in clusters, with each cluster having 100-200 goldsmiths.
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Health cover for SBM account holders
Bangalore: The National Insurance Company and the State Bank of Mysore (SBM) will provide health insurance for all account holders of the bank.

The policy, branded as Dhanvantri, is available for a sum insured up to Rs3 lakh with coverage for up to four members in a family. The additional benefits provided in the policy included free medical check up and ambulance charges.
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Tata MF and the South Indian Bank tie up for product distribution
Kochi: The Tata Mutual Fund has tied up with the South Indian Bank (SIB) to have its mutual fund products distributed through 200 of the 451 bank branches.

The South Indian Bank would be expanding its branch network by adding another 24 branches during the current year, taking its branch network to 475.

It also plans to increase the revenue from selling insurance and mutual fund products from Rs3 crore of last year to Rs10 crore this year.

Tata Asset Management, which presently has Rs12,000 crore of assets and one million investors, hopes to raise the count of its investors to 10 million in another three to five years by expanding its presence from 70 to 500 centres.
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Bank of Rajasthan narrows net loss
Mumbai: The Bank of Rajasthan has reported a decrease in net loss of Rs4.82 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2006, as compared to a net loss of Rs12.09 crore for the same quarter a year ago.

The bank has declared a dividend of 2.5 per cent.

The bank has reported a total income of Rs177.8 crore against Rs157.8 crore. The net interest income was Rs58.53 crore (Rs58.3 crore).

For the full year, the net profit fell to Rs15.02 crore (Rs35.01 crore) and the total income was Rs601 crore (Rs586.1 crore). The net interest income was Rs222.32 crore ( Rs213.44 crore).

The bank reduced the net NPA from 2.5 per cent to 0.99 per cent, said a press release from the bank. The capital adequacy ratio fell to 10.6 per cent from 12.75 per cent.
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