Tamil Nadu’s Narasingapettai Nagaswaram got geographical identification tag.

MInistry of Jal Shakti expressed his displeasure over the slow pace of the approval process for Project Dolphin.

Microfinance lenders cannot charge usurious interest rate: RBI

Microfinance lenders cannot charge usurious rate of interest from borrowers, the Reserve Bank said, and also asked them to put in place a ceiling on pricing of loans and related fees.


A microfinance loan is defined as a collateral-free loan given to a household having an annual income of up to Rs 3 lakh.

Issuing 'Master Direction Reserve Bank of India (Regulatory Framework for Microfinance Loans) Directions, 2022', RBI said all regulated entities (REs) should put in place a board-approved policy regarding pricing of microfinance loans, covering, a ceiling on the interest rate and all other charges applicable to microfinance loans.

The guidelines will take effect 1st April 02022.

The slowdown in the economy in the wake of the Covid pandemic in the last two years seems to have hit the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) the most despite a host of loan restructuring schemes and packages announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government.

India’s equity market has broken into the world’s top five club in terms of market capitalisation for the first time. The country’s total market cap stands at $3.21 trillion, which is higher than that of the UK ($3.19 trillion), Saudi Arabia ($3.18 trillion), and Canada ($3.18 trillion).

The Reserve Bank of India's governor Shaktikanta Das has proposed the use of UPI (united payments interface) to facilitate cardless cash withdrawals across all banks and ATM networks.

This means soon, you won't need a physical card to withdraw cash at an Indian ATM - just a UPI app.

The idea behind this is to help prevent frauds such as card cloning, skimming, device tampering, etc, Das said on Friday, speaking at the central bank's monetary policy meeting.

Google Pay has recently launched a new feature in India, ‘Tap to pay for UPI’, in collaboration with Pine Labs. The feature makes use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

The proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) is not likely to bear interest, considering that the rupee, the sovereign currency it will be based on, does not pay interest, said T. Rabi Sankar, deputy governor, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Direct tax collections touched nearly ₹14 trillion in the just-ended fiscal, exceeding the revised estimates (RE) by ₹1.5 trillion and nearly hitting the estimates for the next fiscal, an unprecedented level of mop-up that gives the government more spending options amid a high deficit and galloping prices.

The Stand-Up India scheme facilitates bank loans between ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe (ST) borrowers and women borrowers. pti

Merger proposals rarely get such a rousing market reception. On Monday, enthusiasm over the news of HDFC Bank’s proposed merger with its mortgage-lender parent, Housing Development Finance Corp.(HDFC), boosted the value of their shares and signalled a shake-up at the top by market capitalization once their stock is unified. Every 25 equity shares of HDFC Ltd are to be swapped with 42 of HDFC Bank, as proposed. If this gets the go-ahead, it will form an index heavyweight. As a private bank, its assets would be about double those of its archrival ICICI Ltd.

The two merger candidates not only have a filial link, which would keep friction low while merging operations, but HDFC’s home-loan expertise and books being rolled into the bank could also give the enlarged lender an edge with customers, apart from a longer-range asset base. Some of the hearty response to this plan was based on how snugly their assets and liabilities could fit. Mismatches of money loaned and borrowed have been the bane of many Indian non-bank lenders. With diverse risk profiles and horizons of lending and borrowing under one roof, the new entity may gain prudential flexibility to secure itself. Size alone wasn’t the deal’s promise.