Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

18 January 2014

RBI to ease liquidity

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to ease the liquidity conditions by purchasing Rs 10,000 crore of government securities under Open Market Operations (OMOs) on January 22. This would be the first OMO auction since the last two months.

• Lately, the liquidity conditions had tightened in absence of government spending. For current financial year, the government aims to contain fiscal deficit at 4.8% as strongly emphasized by the finance minister, P Chidambaram, recently. This may lead to cuts in planned expenditure as was the case last financial year when the government managed to keep fiscal deficit was at 4.9% of gross domestic product.

• According to RBI, there has been a build-up of government’s cash balances which may not be utilized in order to meet the fiscal deficit target for this financial year too. This would, in turn, impact credit growth.

• The government’s cash balance with RBI shot up to around Rs 51,000 crore in December owing to advance tax collections. The central bank has been conducting 7-days, 14-days and 28-days term repo auctions in order to address the liquidity crunch.

• The central bank has projected credit growth of 15% and deposit growth of 14% for the current financial year. So far, banks have been able to clock 9.4% of growth in advances and 11.1% in deposits since the start of this financial year.

• Liberalising the export-import payment norms, the Reserve Bank has extended the time limit to complete such transactions to nine months from six months earlier.

India Inc beats Street hollow

• Several heavyweights like L&T and HDFC are yet to come out with their third quarter report card, but the Street is already on fire as Tata Consultancy, Reliance Industries, Infosys and Bajaj Auto, which are some of the firms that announced their results in the week gone by, surprised the Street on the positive in the third quarter.

• Brokerages are all gung-ho about the results, and have upgraded their target prices on these stocks.

• Experts say RIL is likely to rally up to 3% after the oil and gas major reported profit after tax at Rs 5,510 crore.

• The Street was expecting a drop in Reliance Industries' profit due to worries over falling gas production and refining & petchem margins.

• Experts are seeing the stock crossing Rs 1,000 level in the medium term.

• Talking of TCS, it beat analyst expectations with an astonishing 50.3 per cent jump in third-quarter profit, though sales at home played spoilsport once again.

• The country's largest IT services exporter reported a profit after tax of Rs 5,333 crore for the third quarter.

• Credit Suisse has raised its target for a 12-month period to 2,750 from earlier 2,650.

• Among other brokerage firms that have raised their target price on the stock are CLSA, BofA-ML, Jefferies, Nomura, CItigroup and JPMOrgan. This upping of the TP was post Q3 results.

Manchester United to sell Wayne Rooney

• Chelsea’s coach Jose Mourinho has said Manchester United will sell their ace striker Wayne Rooney this summer only to a club outside the Premier League.
• Chelsea bid twice for Rooney and there are strong indications that Mourinho still believes he can sign the player, who has just one further season of his contract left to run.
• He said maybe this summer they will try to sell Rooney to a non-direct rival, The Independent reports.
• Mourinho later clarified that by non-direct rival he meant an overseas club.

Rafael Nadal thrives at the Australian Open

• Rafael Nadal swept into the Australian Open third round under the Rod Laver Arena roof but Juan Martin Del Potro was sent packing as sweltering temperatures, lightning and rain caused chaos on the outside courts.

• Fifth seed Del Potro, whose match was shunted back to the late evening by the disruptions, was the first major casualty of the men's draw in the early hours of Friday morning when he lost 4-6 6-3 5-7 6-4 7-5 to 62nd ranked Spaniard Roberto Bautista.

• On a third consecutive day of sauna-like heat and with temperatures climbing towards a peak of 43.4 degrees Celsius (110 Fahrenheit), organisers finally enacted the third stage of their "Extreme Heat Policy" after three hour's play.

• Play was suspended for more than four hours on the exposed outer courts and, in a bizarre turn of events, the players had been back on court for less than two hours when a thunderstorm sent them scuttling back to the locker rooms.

• While third seed Maria Sharapova had a tougher time, though, and a quirk of the rules meant her match against Karin Knapp was concluded in the full glare of the sun some 50 minutes after it was adjudged too dangerous to play.

• The Russian reflected the confusion and anger of players over the last three days at a perceived lack of transparency over when the Extreme Heat Policy is put into force.

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