Finmin initiates process for finding new SBI chief

NEW DELHI: The finance ministry has initiated the process for finding new chief of the country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) as Arundhati Bhattacharya's extended term comes to an end on October 6.

"Department of Financial Services has communicated to Banks Board Bureau the emerging vacancies at the top level of PSU banks which will have to be filled during course of the year," a senior finance ministry official said. This also includes chairman and one managing director of the SBI, which alone has market share of more than 20 per cent.

Bhattacharya will complete her four-year term as chairperson of SBI on October 6.

Besides chairman, SBI has four managing directors looking after different departments.

The post assumes significance as the bank has recently merged five associates and the Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) pushing SBI into the league of top 50 banks globally in terms of assets.

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), besides BMB, merged with SBI with effect from April 1. The process of integration would at least take a year. The government had in February approved the merger of these five associate banks with SBI. Later in March, the Cabinet approved merger of BMB as well. SBI first merged State Bank of Saurashtra with itself in 2008. Two years later, State Bank of Indore was merged with it.

For the fourth quarter ended March 2017, the bank reported more than doubling of its net profit on the back of increased lending and reduction in provisioning for bad loans. For the fiscal ended March 2017, the net profit of the bank improved by 5.36 per cent to Rs 10,484 crore as against Rs 9,951 crore in the previous fiscal. NEW DELHI: Tata Trusts are intensifying work on improving maternal and infant nutrition besides large scale food fortification, aiming to reduce incidence of malnutrition by 25 per cent in five states in the next five years. The trusts, which received grants of around Rs 50 crore from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the past two years, are currently carrying out various programmes in Andhra Pradesh, UP, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tripura in co-operation with the state governments.

Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and Jamsetji Tata Trust have been focusing on various programmes, including maternal, infant, and young child nutrition and large scale food fortification, along with setting up platform for policy and research on nutrition and agricultural development in India. "By working with governments of the five states, the trusts aim to bring down the incidence of malnutrition by 25% in next five years, thus impacting mortality rates," a Tata Trusts spokesperson said. NEW DELHI: The direct benefit transfer programme has resulted in Rs 50,000 crore savings for the government in the last three years as funds were directly transferred to 32 crore needy people, BJP president Amit Shah has said.

The Aadhaar-linked DBT scheme, he said, has helped in plugging leakages, removing middlemen and eliminating ghost beneficiaries.

As many as 32 crore people received funds in form of subsidies directly into their bank accounts resulting in savings of nearly Rs 50,000 crore to the exchequer over the last three years, he said. Citing various achievements of the Narendra Modi-led government, Shah said, both direct and indirect taxes have witnessed a growth rate of 20 per cent, which is unprecedented in the history of independent India.

"On the economic front, the Bjp-led government has performed very well. We are the fastest growing nation in the world and inflation by and large is under control," he said.

Listing out the government's high points during 2016-17, Shah said, there were many like "highest urea production, largest gas connection distribution, record coal and power production, highest national highway and rural road construction, vehicle manufacturing, biggest ever software export and highest ever forex reserve".

Besides, he said his party "BJP had achieved the greatest political gain during the year".

He further said that interest rates have been reduced remarkably and fiscal deficit has been reined in at 3.9 per cent in 2015-16.

It was under the NDA regime, the country saw a 5.1 per cent industrial growth and 4 per cent agriculture growth and also 45 per cent rise in FDI inflows, the BJP national president said, adding that exports also surged after registering a slowdown. As a result, he said, per capita income has increased by Rs 10,000 to cross Rs 1-lakh mark at Rs 1.03 lakh.

On soaring financial markets, Shah said both key indices Sensex and Nifty have touched their record highs, triggered by the positive sentiment.

With regard to Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said, "We have moved ahead with it and it will be implemented soon." NEW DELHI: It is a 'myth' that India's labour is cheap and there is a need for lowering interest rates and logistics cost to make the domestic industry competitive, Assocham president Sandeep Jajodia has said.

He said poor infrastructure, "extremely high" cost of power in addition to high interest rates are eroding the competitiveness of Indian industry.

"We talk about cheap labour. I don't think that is true. I don't think we have cheap labour because the productivity of our labour is so low that where you require one person to do a job abroad, you probably have many people to do the same job.

"I don't think India has any advantage. In fact, it has a lot of disadvantages in terms of the ease of doing business, in terms of interest rates, infrastructure is a very big problem. Our infrastructure cost, our logistics cost is many times of what my competitor faces," Jajodia said. The Assocham president said there was a need to clean up the balance sheets of banks and reduce the non-performing assets (NPAS) for credit offtake to pick up.