RBI Formulates EC for Strengthening & Consolidating UCBs; Headed by N S Vishwanathan

On the lines of the “Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies” released with the Monetary Policy Statement on February 05, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) formulated an 8-member Expert Committee (EC) on Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs). The former Deputy Governor of RBI, N. S. Vishwanathan, is the chairman of the committee. The Committee is required to submit its report within three months.

• The committee will examine the issues faced by the UCBs and will also be responsible for preparing a road map for its strengthening.
• The measures to be recommended by the committee will adhere to the recent amendments to Banking Regulation Act, 1949.
• RBI’s Department of Regulation (DoR) will provide secretarial assistance to the Committee.

Members of the Committee:

1.Harsh Kumar Bhanwala

Designation- Former Chairman, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

2.Mukund M Chitale

Designation- Chartered Accountant (CA)

3.NC Muniyappa

Designation- IAS-Indian Administrative Service (Retired)

4.RN Joshi

Designation- IAS (Retired)

5.Prof M. S. Sriram

Designation- Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore

6.Jyotindra M. Mehta

Designation- President, National Federation of Urban Cooperative Banks and Credit Societies Ltd. (NAFCUB)

7.Neeraj Nigam

Designation- Chief General Manager-in-Charge, Department of Regulation, RBI

Other Terms of Reference (ToR) of Committee:

–To suggest effective measures for faster rehabilitation of UCBs.

–To assess the impact of regulatory measures taken by RBI for UCBs to identify key constraints and enablers.

–To consider differential regulations and examine prospects in order to provide more scope in permissible activities for UCB.

–To prepare a blueprint of a vision document for a resilient urban co-operative banking sector. It should be premised upon Principles of Cooperation, depositors’ interest and systemic issues.

Recent Related News:

i.On January 1, 2021, RBI launched the January 2021 round of household surveys namely “Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH)” and “Consumer Confidence Survey (CCS)” to represent inflation expectations and consumer confidence. Both surveys will be conducted by the Mumbai (Maharashtra) based agency, M/s Hansa Research Group Pvt. Ltd., on behalf of the RBI.

ii.On January 5, 2021, RBI announced Operationalization of the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) Scheme with an initial corpus of INR 345 Crores for three years starting from January 1, 2021 & may be extended for two more years depending upon the progress.

About Reserve Bank of India (RBI):

Formation– 1 April 1935
Governor– Shaktikanta Das
Headquarters– Mumbai, Maharashtra
Deputy Governors– 4 (Bibhu Prasad Kanungo, Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, and M Rajeswar Rao)