1.RBI has proposed to allow banks to invest in Real Estate Infrastructure trusts and Infrastructure Trusts after capital market regulator SEBI requested RBI to allow banks to invest in the scheme.Currently banks are allowed to invest and equities to the extend of 20% of their Net owned Funds in REiTs and InviTs.
2.RBI has decided to Keep Repo Rate Unchanged at 6.25% in its first Bi-Monthly policy review for the financial year on April 6th.Surprisingly RBI has increased the Reverse Repo rate by 25 basis points to 6%.The bank also kept CRR unchanged at 4%.
3.Asian Development bank said that India's growth rate will improve to 7.4% during 2017-18 and further to 7.6% in the next fiscal.
4.Finance Ministry has extended the time limit for providing PAN or Form no.60 by bank account holders who have not given it at the time of account opening of later to June 30,2017.CBDT had issued a notification making it mandatory for bank savings account holders to provide PAN of Form no.60 by February 28,2017 in case the documents has not been provide earlier.
5.REserve bank of India has enable faster settlement of the process of NEFT by increasing the settlement cycle to 23 from 12 currently to facilitate half hourly settlements instead of the hourly settlement practice now.
When a transaction is made at bank branch the n the forward the request to the RBI to be accommodated in the next settlement cycle thus increase of the Number of cycles will allow faster settlement of Funds and more funds to settle in a day.
6.India has moved up 12 places to serve 40th rank on WEF's 2017 travel and tourism competitive Index joining 4 other countries-South Korea,Israel,Azerbaijan and Tajikistan -that improved their standing by mnore than 10 places.Spain,France and Germany occupies the top three places.
