Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Jan 20, 2006
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Jan 20, 2006 |
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Money & Banking
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Information Technology `RTGS transactions to be free only till March 31' Our Bureau
Ms Usha Thorat, RBI Deputy Governor
Kolkata , Jan. 19 TRANSACTIONS undertaken through the real time gross settlement (RTGS) system, designed to make inter-bank payments and receipts safe, transparent and efficient, will not be cheap though the cost might drop as and when the volume increases. Right now the Reserve Bank of India's objective is to bring all high-value transactions, i.e. Rs one lakh and above, under the system though no target date has been fixed for it. This was stated by Ms Usha Thorat, Deputy Governor, RBI, while talking to newspersons after inaugurating the RTGS system in West Bengal State Co-operative Bank (WBSCB) here on Thursday. WBSCB is the second co-operative bank in the country to introduce the RTGS system. "Till March 31, 2006, the RBI will allow all electronic transfers free of cost but this could not continue for long; after all there is a cost involved in installing and operating a RTGS system," Ms Thorat said, adding that the pricing would be decided depending on the response from the prospective beneficiaries of the system. Earlier, Mr Samir Ghosh, Chairman of WBSCB, appealed to the RBI and Nabard for financial assistance to meet, at least partially, part of the cost incurred to install the RTGS system in the bank. Introduced in March 2004, the RTGS system now covers 15,000 branches of 96 banks in 500 centres involving daily 7,000 transactions worth Rs 50,000 crore. In West Bengal, the system is in operation in 385 branches of 50 banks. Ms Thorat conceded that the share of co-operative credit was going down and the Government was concerned about it. The recommendation of the Vaidyanathan Committee, which examined the whole gamut of the relevant issues, would be implemented soon. Ms Thorat met the West Bengal Finance Minister, Dr Asim Dasgupta, earlier in the day and discussed how to improve the credit delivery system in the State through the banking channels and co-operatives. "We've also discussed various options as to how to implement mergers of various RRBs but nothing has been finalised as yet," she said. The credit-deposit ratio in the State was 58 per cent, slightly lower than the national average of 60 per cent. The WBSCB Chairman expressed hope that banks not eligible for RTGS membership or choosing not to become members of RTGS would enter into arrangements with WBSCB to avail themselves of the facility. "We will be happy to extend our services in this regard to the apex cooperative banks in the neighbouring States such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Tripura, Orissa, Sikkim and other North-Eastern States," he said.
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