Rupee slips
Mumbai: The rupee slipped a bit against the US dollar. The home currency opened weak at 46.61/63 and touched an intra-day low of 46.65 to finally close at 46.59. The rupee opened weak, tracking the movement of yen against the dollar.

Forwards: In the forward premia market, the six-month ended at 1.09 per cent (1.05 per cent) and the 12-month ended at 1.17 per cent (1.15 per cent)

Bonds: Bond prices fell by almost 40 paise following the announcement of the Rs9,000-crore government securities auction on Monday.

Dealers said that there was virtually no investor interest in the market and the bearish trend was expected to continue.

G-secs: The 7.59 per cent-10 year-2016 paper opened at Rs95.40 (8.29 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs95.36 (8.29 per cent YTM), down from Monday's Rs95.69 (8.24 per cent YTM). The 9.39 per cent-5 year-2011 paper opened at Rs105.91 (7.91 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs105.81 (7.93 per cent YTM).

Call rates: Call rates remained unchanged between 6.00 and 6.10 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 Rs24,780 crore and in the second one-day reverse repo auction, the apex bank received 41 bids for Rs24,410 crore. There were no repo bids.

CBLO: The CBLO market saw 341 trades aggregating to Rs18,911.40 crore in the 5.75-5.95 per cent range.
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Home loan rates, PLR rises
Mumbai: Banks and housing finance companies have begun to hike lending rates by 25-50 basis points. SBI has raised its Prime Lending Rate (PLR) by 25 basis points and HDFC jacked up home loan rates by 50 basis points.

Floating interest rates on home loans up to five years will go up to 9 per cent; on loans of 5-15 years it will go up to 9.75 per cent; and on loans of 15-25 years it will go up to 10 per cent. The bank had last raised BPLR and home loans on April 29 this year by 50 bps.

Bank of Baroda also increased the floating interest rate on home loans by 50 basis points with effect from August 1.

The revised floating home loan rate is in the range of 9 to 10 per cent on loans of five-25 years' tenure.

Punjab National Bank has raised PLR by 25 basis points from 11.25 per cent to 11.50 per cent per annum with immediate effect. It had last raised its BPLR on May 1 this year from 10.75 per cent to 11.25 per cent. For floating rate home loans, interest has been increased by 50 basis points for all repayment tenures except for 20-25 years, wherein the increase is 25 basis points. For the fixed option, the interest rate has been increased by 25 basis points and the bank would review the interest rate every fifth year.
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Chidambaram says no increase in small savings, PF rates
New Delhi: The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, has said there would be no increase in the interest rate on small savings, employees provident fund and pension fund. This comes in the wake of the interest rate hike effected by the Reserve Bank of India last week. The central bank had increased its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 6 per cent, a four-year high.

The Central Government had cut interest rate on small savings to 8 per cent in 2003 and has not revised it since. In January, the Government had cut the rate on the Employees Provident Fund, the country's biggest pension fund, to 8.5 per cent for the current fiscal as against 9.5 per cent last fiscal.
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Bank of Rajasthan to come out with Rs100-cr rights issue
Mumbai: Bank of Rajasthan plans to come out with a Rs100-crore rights issue by December to shore up its capital base as the bank expects significant growth this fiscal.

The bank's capital adequacy ratio stood at 12 per cent as of June 30.The bank is also planning to bring down the promoters' share from 44.16 per cent to 30 per cent by 2009 through follow-on public issues.

BoR hopes to reduce its net non-performing assets (NPAs) to almost half per cent during 2006-07 and bring it down to zero by 2008-09. The share of net NPAs to total assets as on June 30, 2006 was 1.01 per cent or Rs40 crore. The bank which has already hiked its deposit rate by 50 basis may increase its lending rate by 25 basis points.
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Wells Fargo to open technology centre in India
New York: The fifth largest bank in the U.S, Wells Fargo & Co. plans to open a technology resource facility in Hyderabad, India. The bank says it is experiencing a shortage of qualified technical talent in the United States. The San Francisco-based company expects the facility, which will provide software development, to open in the fourth quarter of this fiscal. Wells Fargo plans at first to hire 30 to 50 people for the unit, and might employ as many as 300 by year end.

Wells Fargo said the opening is not a cost-cutting move. It also said the facility will not affect U.S. employment levels, involve customer-contact positions or manage customer data.
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Rabo India offers carbon credit trading product
Chennai: Rabo India Finance (a wholly owned subsidiary of Rabobank International) has launched a carbon credit trading product.

Carbon credit trading helps companies meet internationally accepted emission control norms by purchasing these credits from companies who have surplus credits or have projects that generate carbon credits.

Rabo India Finance will help companies buy carbon credits, locate buyers and sell them to a final buyer. It will also provide a "credit wrap", i.e. guarantee the delivery of contracted carbon credits to the overseas buyer, besides providing hedging products.

The bank says the credit wrap product will help overseas buyers (European corporates or other entities) who do not have knowledge of Indian companies and credit risks. The overseas buyer faces a globally rated counter party (i.e. Rabobank), rather than a lesser-known developing country counter party. Rabobank will assume the credit risk - take the risks on account of the ability of the Indian company to execute the project in time and run it to specifications so that the contracted carbon credits can be verifiably generated year after year.
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