01.05.2007

• CMD of RINL
• Mr. P.K. Bishnoi has taken over as the CMD of Rastriya Inspat Nigam Limited, the holding company of the Vizag Steel Plant.
• About J&K imbroglio
• Chaos, confusion, helplessness, mis-direction, frustration, anger, mistrust, hatred, hawkish and so on, are the words that come to my mind whenever I think of J&K insurgency. There were times when I wandered into believing that disowning J&K is perhaps a better solution than to keep clinging to (whatever that is left of) it as India’s territory.
• But I am really pleasantly surprised to find a saner voice in the most unlikely of persons enmeshed in the problem. The voice of Sardar Abdul Qayum Khan, former PM and now President of PoK. It is very interesting to know that he, in 1947 initiated the military thrust into Poonch that sparked off the first India-Pakistan war.
• You should not miss this interview published by “The Hindu” in today’s edition.
• RBI guidelines on priority sector lending
• These guidelines are issued after two rounds of public discussion based on the basic proposals submitted by the internal working group headed by C.S. Murthy in September 2005.
• The salient features of the guidelines include:
• Securitization and re-lending of priority sector advances
• Focus on targeting of the directed credit and
• Non-introduction of an overall target for small enterprises in the case of domestic banks
• New norms qualify home loans up to Rs. 20 lakhs as priority sector as against Rs. 15 lakhs earlier.
• Education loans up to Rs. 20 lakh for studies abroad and Rs. 10 lakh for studies in India qualify as priority sector loans.
• The overall targets of 40% and 32% of lending for domestic and foreign banks respectively, of the ANBC (Adjusted Net Bank Credit) retained.
• ANBC: is net bank credit plus investments made by banks in non-SLR bonds held in the held-to-maturity category or credit equivalent amount of off-balance-sheet exposure, whichever is higher.
• What is a ‘slam dunk’?
• In the days before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush had asked the then CIA Director how good the case was against Saddam Hussein having WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and the Director (George Tenet) had replied: “It is a slam dunk, Mr. President.”
• It is a baseball term, and means a near certainty.