Economy punctured Reduce MAB further
A member of ruling party, Yashwant Sinha’s observations on the Indian economy is an eye-opener for the government. The BJP, in the interest of the country, should take it in right spirit. The economy seemed to be on the right track, but was derailed by the half-baked demonetisation policy. The sliding GDP numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. Adding fuel to the fire is the GST. Looks like most of the initiatives are being taken hurriedly without ground preparedness.
The economy can be revived if corrective steps are taken in a more practical manner: The government should bring down oil prices on par with neighbouring countries, and if needed, completely do away with excise and other levies on petrol and diesel. The government should go in for some austerity measures within its departments. The government should come out with a single tax levy under the GST; it should revisit the direct tax structure and exports must be given top priority. Foreign trade policies and procedures must be extremely liberal and bottleneck-free to push exports. The NITI Aayog’s recent reports should be taken seriously. People-friendly procedures should be put in place to take the country forward.
A Sathyanarayana New Delhi After much of public outcry, the State Bank of India (SBI) has decided to reduce from October 1, 2017, the MAB (monthly average balance) in SB accounts in metros from ~5,000 to ~ 3,000. The pensioners have been spared from maintaining minimum balance in their pension accounts.
The Reserve Bank of India has not stipulated any minimum balance to be maintained in pension accounts. Banks have framed their own rules in this regard and some banks have also permitted zero balance.
Now that the SBI has rightly decided not to subject the pensioners to maintain the MAB, the bank should pay back the pensioners the amount of penalty recovered from April 1, 2017.
Further, as maintaining MAB of ~3,000 in metro or urban areas is also going to be difficult to 40-50 per cent of account holders across the country, the bank should change the MAB requirement to the pre-April, 2017 position, that is, ~1,000 and ~500 for account holders of bank branches located in metro/urban and rural areas respectively.
Ramanath Nakhate Mumbai