The Hindu Business Line : Banking operations limping back to normalcy

A few operations (ATM transactions, settlement and clearing) did suffer some minor hurdles in the last two days. By Friday, most banks reported near normal activity. However, attendance was thin.

Out of the 116 banks that normally participate in the Reserve Bank of India's clearing in Zone IV, non-Fort area, only 86 participated on July 26. The National Clearing Centre cleared 4.5 lakh cheques and State Bank of India cleared 600 cheques.

However, the full extent of the backlog will be known only by Saturday, after banks send the cheques to the clearing centres on Friday.

The Mumbai clearing house sees an average of five to seven lakh instruments daily, said Mr K. Unnikrishnan, Senior Vice-President, IBA. "The instruments tendered on Tuesday could be moved only on Friday. So, to that extent, customers will get affected. But, by and large, people would understand the difficulty," he said.

UTI Bank's treasury division was swamped with routine transactions on Friday, which left the dealers with hardly any time for trading, said Mr Prakash Rao, Vice-President, Head, forex trading.

The bank cleared 2,000-2,500 foreign exchange transactions on Friday alone, amounting to around $90 million.

"Except Mumbai, all other centres were working during the last two days. But we have foreign exchange only in Mumbai. So, on Friday we were busy with all the backlog of foreign exchange reporting. We were also understaffed as many people returned home only on Thursday," he said.

All branches of IDBI Bank, except one in Kolhapur, were open on Friday, said Mr G.V. Nageswara Rao, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. "Only one of our branches in Kolhapur could not be opened on Friday. That apart, by Wednesday afternoon, all ATM problems were resolved," he said.

Some of the problems faced by the bank due to telephone lines being down included ATMs being down and credit and debit cards not being accepted at point-of-sale terminals.

HDFC Bank, which has around 80 branches in Mumbai and Thane and 540 all over the country, too was hit by lack of connectivity, said Mr Bhavesh Zaveri, Senior Vice-President, Head, Branch Operations. However, except a few ATMs in Mumbai, all the others were working by Thursday noon, he said.

On Friday, the depository division saw a little more than the normal rush of customers, who wanted to settle their trades, Mr Zaveri said. "Depository transactions saw some rush of customers because people had bought and sold shares. But there were no cases of default as the BSE and the NSE were closed and NSDL had postponed the `pay-ins' by one or two days," he said.

Some corporate offices also saw less than full attendance, as staff members staying in far off suburbs could not reach on Friday.

State Bank of India released a note that on July 26 there were 6.36 lakh ATM transactions, against a daily average of seven to eight lakh transactions. In Mumbai, 150 ATMs were down due to telecom and power breakdown, the note said.

ICICI Bank also issued a statement stating that only 45 ATMs in Mumbai were affected due to water logging, lack of electricity and faulty telephone lines.

Complete banking operations would possibly resume from Monday, officials said.

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