1 mn bank accts, Rs 120 lakh crore black money abroad, says BJP’s Subramanian Swamy-FE
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy today expressed hope that the black money stashed in foreign banks would return to the country in about one year.
“We are optimistic that the black money stashed in foreign banks would return to the country in about one year time, much before the expectation of the people,” Swamy told reporters here.
Rejecting apprehension that the Centre was taking time on the matter of bringing black money back, Swamy said it was taking some time as about one million bank accounts have been opened by Indians in 70 odd countries.
About Rs 120 lakh crore were stashed in foreign banks, the senior BJP leader said.
On the National Herald case in which Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were named, Swamy said, “The Supreme Court in 2007 had given a direction to set up a special investigation team for the purpose. But, they did nothing till the NDA government came to the power.
“There has been an attempt to grab properties worth Rs 5,000 crore simply by forming a private limited company in the name of Young Indian Ltd by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vora and others,” Swamy said about the case initiated by him.
Stating that the paid off capital of the company was only Rs 5 lakh, Swamy alleged there had been fraud, breach of trust by manipulation.
“Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi own 76 per cent of the share on the private limited company,” he pointed out.
Swamy claimed that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, as majority shareholders of Young Indian Ltd (YIL), benefited from the acquisition of Associated Journals Ltd (AJL).
After private banks – HDFC Bank and Axis bank – decided to charge own customers for more than five transactions at their ATMs, public sector lender Union Bank of India has also joined the bandwagon.
The Mumbai-based bank will charge own customers for more than eight transactions per month at its ATMs and more than five at other banks ATMs. It will be charging Rs 15 per (excluding tax) from November 15, 2014.
Many public sector banks are still in "wait and watch mode". They would like to see how pricing is firmed up by the private banks and large state-owned banks.
HDFC Bank and Axis Bank will charge their own customers for more than five transactions at their Automated Teller Machines starting 1 December.
HDFC Bank will be charging Rs 20 for financial transactions and Rs 8.5 (excluding taxes) for non-financial transactions (balance enquiry, mini statement). Axis Bank will be charging Rs 20 (excluding taxes) for financial transactions and Rs 9.5 for non-financial transactions
At other bank ATMs, the customers of these banks will be charged beyond three transactions. Earlier five transactions were free at non-home bank ATMs.
However, Axis Bank has made ten transactions free for its Prime Plus Savings Account and Prime Salary account holders. These account holders are mandated to have a minimum opening balance of Rs 1 lakh.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the government is planning to bring down its stake in public sector banks to 52% so as to meet Rs 3 lakh crore capital requirement.
"We are also trying to bring down the governmental equity in the banks to about 52% so that a large amount of capital, almost closing to Rs 3 lakh crore, can be introduced into banks itself, so that they have a lot more resources for financial inclusion," he said.
In 2010, the then Cabinet had approved a proposal to keep the minimum shareholding of government to 58% in the public sector banks in order to provide buffer for the future.
As per law, government holding at any moment must not come below 51% to maintain the public sector character of PSU banks.
At present, government shareholding in various banks varies between 56.26% ( Bank of Baroda) and 88.63% (Central Bank of India).
Public sector banks require equity capital of Rs 2.4 lakh crore by 2018 to meet Basel III norms. For the current fiscal, the government has allocated Rs 11,200 crore for bank capitalisation.
The government had infused an amount of Rs 58,600 crore between 2011 and 2014.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget speech had said that "to be in line with Basel-III norms there is a requirement to infuse Rs 2,40,000 crore as equity by 2018 in our banks. To meet this huge capital requirement we need to raise additional resources to fulfil this obligation".
While preserving the public ownership, the capital of these banks will be raised by increasing the shareholding of the people in a phased manner through the sale of shares largely through retail to common citizens of this country, the minister had said.
To rein-in bad loans, Central Bank of India has drastically cut the ticket size of loans it gives to India Inc.
The public sector bank has capped fresh loan exposure at ₹150-200 crore per company as against ₹300-400 crore earlier.
The bank has also pared its corporate loan exposure by ₹13,797 crore in the last one year.
Instead, it has focused on giving loans to the non-priority sector such as agriculture, retail, and micro and small enterprises (MSE).
“This (curtailing the ticket size of loans to companies) is a risk mitigation measure. We are not renewing low-yielding short-term loans,” said BK Divakara, Executive Director.
The bank believes multiple smaller loans, as opposed to a few large corporate loans, can reduce the risk of bad loans.
The bank’s corporate credit portfolio has come down from ₹1,13,573 crore in September-end 2013 to ₹99,776 crore in September-end 2014.
According to Executive Director Raj Kumar Goyal, Central Bank has taken a conscious decision to focus on non-priority sector loans. This has also helped correct the earlier skew in the bank’s loan portfolio towards corporate loans.
Corporate credit accounted for 53.55 per cent of total loans in the September 2014 quarter, as against 63.58 per cent during the corresponding quarter last year. Agriculture loans account for 17.89 per cent of total loans (12.73 per cent as on September-end 2013); retail accounts for 16.24 per cent (13.37 per cent); and MSE account for 12.32 per cent (10.33 per cent).
Rajeev Rishi, Chairman and Managing Director, said after his bank posted a huge loss of ₹1,509 crore in the second quarter of FY14, it undertook course correction, focusing on recovery from bad loans, increasing retail credit and mobilising low cost deposits.
Profits
In the second quarter ended September 30, 2014, Central Bank saw a turnaround in its fortunes, reporting a net profit of ₹103 crore.
Year-on-year bad loans, in gross terms, edged down to ₹11,440 crore as against ₹11,563 crore during the corresponding quarter last year.