February 5, 2015
February 4, 2015
Talks between IBA & UFBU on 03.02.2015
IBA says that Negotiations had failed and blamed the Unions for their adamant stand
The unions say IBA’s offer is unacceptable and they will go on a four-day strike starting 25 FebruaryMumbai: The latest round of wage negotiation between the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and bank unions failed on Tuesday, which will likely prompt employee unrest in banks over the coming weeks. Bank unions are adamant on a wage hike of 19.5% while the IBA raised its offer only by half a percentage point to 13%. The unions said the offer was unacceptable and that they would go on a four-day strike starting 25 February, bank union representativesand IBA officials said.The Union government will announce its budget for fiscal 2015-16 on 28 February, the final day of the threatened four-day strike.
If even after the strike a wage agreement is not reached, the unions have threatened to go on an indefinite strike starting on 16 March.Bank wages are revised every five years through bipartite negotiations between the unions and the banks.
“The IBA told us we will offer you 0.5% more, provided you bring down your demand,” said Vishwas Utagi, convenor, Maharashtra, for the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella organization of nine such unions. More than 1 million employees of public sector, private and even foreign banks are members of the unions.
“IBA did not want to discuss at all, but said we need to bring down our demand to get the 0.5% hike. Not only the hike is paltry, any conditional offer is unacceptable to us,” Utagi said, adding that this time the strikes will be much more intense as the unions had cancelled previous strikes hoping IBA wanted to conclude the negotiations quickly.
An official with the IBA confirmed that negotiations had failed and blamed the unions for their adamant stand.“We offered them 13%, provided they bring down their demand to 17.5%, but they were very inflexible,” said an IBA official who did not wish to be named. While the IBA started the negotiation process with a pay hike proposal of 5%, unions demanded 25%. Negotiations largely stalled in 2014, and employees stayed off work several times. In 2010, the last time wages were settled, the hike was 17.5%.
The last hike, however, included pension and gratuity, while this time the hike is being calculated only on the pay slip component. Including pension and gratuity, the hike proposed now is above 12.5%. In absolute amount, the proposed hike is bigger. Excluding pension, the hike works out to Rs.3,938 crore for the banking industry. Including pension, the proposal will cost Rs.7,000-7,500 crore.Including pension, the hike last time worked out to Rs.4,816 crore for public sector banks. Excluding pension and gratuity, the hike on the pay slip component was Rs.2,980 crore.
113 Applications Received for Payment & Small Banks
Reserve Bank gets 41 applications for #payment #banks, 72 for #small banks
The Reserve Bank of India (#RBI) has received at least 113 applications for setting up small and payments banks, it said on Tuesday.The deadline to submit applications for setting up niche banks was Monday. It had been extended from the earlier deadline of January 16.In its bi-monthly monetary policy statement, the RBI said: "seventy two applications for small #finance banks and 41 applications for payments banks were received up to the deadline for submission yesterday. This number excludes applications that might have been received at other venues.
"These applications are now going to be scrutinised and evaluated by the External Advisory Committee (#EAC).The EAC for small banks will be chaired by Usha Thorat, former deputy governor, RBI. Nachiket Mor, director, Central Board, RBI, will chair the committee for payments banks.Several corporate giants such as #RelianceIndustries, #Bharti #Airtel, #Aditya #BirlaGroup, #Future Group, #Vodafone and others are in the race to get a licence for payments banks. Lenders such as #ICICI Bank, #Kotak #Mahindra Bank and #Axis Bank have expressed an interest to partner with applicants for payments banks.Payments banks can accept deposits of up to Rs 1 lakh, offer current and savings account deposits, issue debit cards and provide internet banking. They are not allowed to lend or issue credit cards. Other players that have applied for payments banks include #Paytm, #Oxigen, #Fino #PayTech and #ItzCash.
Small finance banks - like commercial lenders - accept deposits from and lend to unserved and under-served sections.The maximum loan size and investment limit exposure to single and group obligors cannot be more than 10 per cent and 15 per cent of its capital funds, respectively. Also, at least 50 per cent of their loan portfolio has to include loans and advances of up to Rs 25 lakh.After the draft guidelines for small finance banks came out, the enthusiasm for it was limited. However, in the final guidelines, RBI had removed the restrictions on the area of operations, thus leading to a greater interest."The interest for small banks went up after RBI removed the clause for geographical restriction.
Not many players wanted to apply at that time if the operations were going to be limited only to a certain cluster," said Shinjini Kumar, leader, banking and capital markets, #PricewaterhouseCoopers #India.RBI had also said small banks can convert themselves into universal banks, though the transition would not be automatic and will depend on the regulator's approval.
#SKS #Microfinance, #DHFL, #Capital Area Local Bank, #Coastal Local Area Bank, and others have applied to open small banks. Several other microfinance companies, some non-banking financial companies, local area banks and individuals have also applied for small finance bank licence.
February 3, 2015
January 31, 2015
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