Sunday, January 19, 2014

2014 A Tough Year for the Indian Economy

A tough year ahead for the economy:
First decade of the century had witnessed greater height and steeper fall in global economy the same has been true for Indian economy. The greatness of Indian economy, though at pains, is that it kept on expanding twice the global economic expansion rate during this period. Some even say that the economy is moving more by sentiments than fundamentals, because we do not have the rate of savings and investments moving up as was the case five years ago.

Friday, January 3, 2014

VITALINFO: Why FinMin wants public sector lenders to rush into selling insurance

VITALINFO: Why FinMin wants public sector lenders to rush into selling insurancePSBs to sell the insurance products and invest in training of its staff already overloaded with other regular banking work and not having time to spare for training off their operating desks, would end up selling soaps of TATA by Proctor and Gamble. The bancassurance itself has not take off as a corporate agency model successfully. Most staff today know only the system and not banking domain. If they are asked to get into another domain insurance as well, the banks' balance sheets will take a big hit. It is time that the banks are allowed to do banking more efficiently and in a more customer-friendly manner and also devote more time for innovation of new deposit and credit products competitively in the emerging rural areas. It is also important that the human capital should be allowed to add its weight for strengthening Basel III emerging capital requirements. 'Let not thy winged days be spent in vain, where gone no gold can try them back again.'(Oliver Goldsmith) It is time to revisit the recommendation of the First Financial Sector Reforms of M. Narasimham on the Government diluting its hold over public sector banks, particularly in not getting into micro management. Let the banks decide for themselves what business they should do and what they should not and hold themselves responsible for all their decisions.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Sthitapragna

STHITAPRAGJNA 
Thiru Dr. M. S. SWAMINATHAN


Imagining this great scholar 
Is no more with us, And
This architect of Green revolution
Found his place in Heaven,
Left me in grief unmeasured.

Glory and glitter,
Simplicity and grandeur
Thine inner chambers
Even in charming greens.

Knowledge you inhale
Research you exhale
Thou art breathing farming fresh
Benevolent thou, beckon
Nation’s Farm Policy.

Bright in looks
And long in titles
Only short of ‘Nobel’,
Sweet and warm
Your gesture unforgettable.

Penning ‘Foreword’ for
Agricultural Banking:
Getting the perspective Right
Thou art conferred a great honour unto me.

‘Files drive Right to Information
Farmers drive Right to Food’
Who else but thou can short-script thus.
Recalling my humble offering,

Tears rolled down
Hearing your sad demise
May your soul rest in peace
With Gods holding a bouquet
To welcome you.



B. Yerram Raju
28-10-2023




Financial Inclusion - Full of Sound and Fury

Financial Inclusion is full of sound and fury:
As India faces General Elections in the next four months it is time to look at the Financial Inclusion efforts as it is a barometer for poverty reduction. The CRISIL Financial Inclusion index showed a marginal improvement of around 2.2 between 2010 and 2011. The RBI's composite analysis recently put down by its Executive Director, P. Vijay Bhaskar says that from the NSSO 59th round (Jan-Dec 2003) reflecting a financial exclusion of 51.4 percent farmer households there is considerable improvement but fails in its own study to make exact comparison where it mentions in of all the rural households having access to financial services from the banks. This chart depicts from 1951 to 2002 the course of debt from the formal and informal sources. The formal sources increased by just 4.2% between 1991 and 2002 - the initial years of reforms in the banking sector while the informal sources of debt increased by 13.8% during the same year.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

VITALINFO: RBI's Joshi on the bank's wide-ranging strategies to raise financial awareness

VITALINFO: RBI's Joshi on the bank's wide-ranging strategies to raise financial awareness
While RBI's Joshi rightly highlighted the current efforts of the Central Bank on financial awareness, the snail space at which such efforts are moving only expose the lack of interest on the part of the actual players: even the FLCs are not functioning the way they should. In fact their creation happened with lot of drive and push from the RBI. If such efforts do not internalize in the organizations for effective delivery, they remain cosmetic. The opportunity cost of monitoring from the central bank would be quite high. It is desirable that an external monitoring group be set up by the RBI where region-wise, a representative of reputed academic or training institution, a representative from NGOs, a representative from the RBI regional office as members who can oversee the outputs of the FLCs at the ground level.