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🍒    Rs 2,000 notes to be withdrawn from circulation, exchange window to be open till September 30 : Currency notes of Rs 2,000 denomination will be withdrawn from circulation, said a Reserve Bank of India circular released on May 19. The central bank has asked banks to provide deposit and/or exchange facility for Rs 2,000 notes until September 30, 2023, a statement said. The banknotes of Rs 2,000 denomination will continue to be legal tender, it said. "Holders of these notes may deposit Rs 2,000 banknotes into their bank accounts and/or exchange them into banknotes of other denominations at any bank branch. Deposit into bank accounts can be made in the usual manner, that is, without restrictions and subject to extant instructions and other applicable statutory provisions," it said. Exchange facility for Rs 2,000 bank notes up to Rs 20,000 at a time would be available from May 23, the RBI said.- economic times

🍒    Punjab National Bank Q4 net surges 477% to ₹1,159 crore : Punjab National Bank (PNB), the country’s second-largest public sector bank, reported on Friday a 477 per cent increase in standalone net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023, at ₹1,159 crore (₹201 crore). In the December 2022 quarter, PNB recorded a net profit of ₹629 crore. Encouraged by strong bottomline performance, PNB is now eyeing full-year profits of over ₹4,000 crore this fiscal (2023-24), Atul Kumar Goel, Managing Director and CEO, said here on Friday.  The latest quarterly bottomline performance of the bank was its best in the last twelve quarters, he added. - Business Line

🍒    RBI to pay ₹87,416 crore as dividend to Centre for FY23 : The Reserve Bank of India’s Central Board of Directors on Friday approved the transfer of ₹87,416 crore as surplus to the Central government for the accounting year 2022-23. This is 188 per cent higher than previous financial year’s surplus transfer of ₹30,307 crore. The board decided to keep the contingency risk buffer (CRB) at 6 per cent (5.50 per cent in FY22). As per the expert committee to review the extant economic capital framework, CRB is required to be maintained within a range of 6.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent of the RBI’s balance sheet, comprising 5.5 to 4.5 per cent for monetary and financial stability risks and 1 per cent for credit and operational risks. - Business Line

🍒    Bandhan Bank Q4 net profit declines 58% to ₹808 crore : Bandhan Bank registered a 58 per cent drop in net profit at ₹808 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2023, as against ₹1,902 crore in the same period last year. The drop in net profit was primarily on account of a lack of provisioning in the fourth quarter of last fiscal (FY22) as compared with ₹740 crore during the fourth quarter of FY23. According to Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, MD & CEO, Bandhan Bank, the bank had taken an accelerated provisioning to the tune of ₹4,000 crore in the second quarter of FY22, and so it did not have to take any further provisioning during the subsequent quarters. However, during 2022–23, the bank has been taking provisions every quarter, so the net profit during Q4 of FY23 may not be comparable with the same period last year. - Business Line

🍒    70 per cent of new demand for SBI Card comes from tier-II and beyond towns: MD & CEO : Nearly 70 per cent of the incremental demand for SBI Card comes from customers in tier-II and beyond towns and cities, says MD and CEO, Rama Mohan Rao Amara.  “Tier-II-plus towns contribute almost 70 per cent of new card demand, and 66 per cent of online spends. So, we have been a beneficiary of the shift in consumer mindset,” said Amara at the launch of the SBI Paytm card on the RuPay network. As of April-end, SBI Card had 1.7 crore credit cards in-force, with 94,472 new card additions during the month. Card spends for April were at Rs 24,291 crore. Credit cards have become more acceptable and financially inclusive thanks to the reach of the RuPay network, and the move to integrate credit cards on the UPI network. - Business Line

🍒    PNB Housing Finance Q4 net profit soars 65% to ₹279 crore : PNB Housing Finance Limited (PNBHFL) has reported a 65 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023 at ₹279 crore. For the entire 2022-23 fiscal, PNB Housing Finance’s bottom line came in at ₹1,046 crore, up 25 per cent over net profit of ₹836 crore recorded in previous fiscal.  For the quarter under review, net interest income improved by 57 per cent year-on-year. In fiscal 2022-23, net interest income stood at ₹2,346 crore, registering a 26 per cent increase over ₹ 1,869 crore in the previous fiscal, PNBHFL said in a filing with the stock exchanges.  - Business Line

🍒    Muthoot Finance post ₹3,474 crore net profit in FY23  : The gold loan NBFC Muthoot Finance Ltd. registered a net profit of ₹3,474 crore in FY23 as against ₹3,954 crore in FY22. The net profit in Q4 stood at ₹903 crore against ₹960 crore in Loan assets stood at ₹63,210 crore as compared to ₹58,053 crore last year, registering a growth of 9 per cent. Gold Loan Assets stood at ₹61,875 crore as compared with ₹57,531 crore last year, registering a growth of 8%. During Q4 FY23, loan assets grew by ₹5,479 crore. The consolidated loan AUM grew 11 per cent YoY to ₹71,497 crore in FY23, compared to ₹64,494 crore last year. During the quarter, consolidated loan assets under management increased by 10 per cent. Consolidated profit after tax increased by 8 per cent to ₹1,009 crore as against ₹934 crore last quarter. - Business Line

🍒    Credit card spends fall 3.3% in April after touching record high in March : Credit card spends fell to ₹1.33-lakh crore in April 2023, down 3.3 per cent from the record high of ₹1.37-lakh crore seen in the previous month, as per data released by the Reserve Bank of India. As per the data, 61 per cent of the credit card spends during the month were for e-commerce payments, and 39 per cent were for PoS (point-of-sale) transactions. 

Most major issuers saw a decline of 1.4-5.4 per cent in spends during the month, barring HDFC Bank which saw a marginal increase of 0.9 per cent to ₹37,957 crore — the highest in the industry. It was followed by State Bank of India which saw credit cards spends worth ₹24,291 crore and ICICI Bank worth ₹22,667 crore. - Business Line

🍒    India’s forex reserves surge by $3.553 bn, touching $599.529 bn : Rising for the second consecutive week, India's forex kitty jumped USD 3.553 billion to USD 599.529 billion for the week ended May 12, the RBI said on Friday. The overall reserves had jumped by USD 7.196 billion to USD 595.976 billion for the previous reporting week. It can be noted that in October 2021, the country's forex kitty had reached an all-time high of USD 645 billion. The reserves have been declining as the central bank deploys the kitty to defend the rupee amid pressures caused majorly by global developments. - Business Line

🍒    NCLT dismisses IDBI Bank's insolvency plea against Zee Entertainment : The National Company Law Tribunal on Friday dismissed IDBI Bank's insolvency plea against Subhash Chandra promoted Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL). The public sector lender had filed an insolvency resolution petition against Zee for the default of over Rs 149 crore. The company said in a filing in December 2022 told said that IDBI Bank, claiming to be a financial creditor, filed the petition before the Mumbai bench of the NCLT. - Economic Times

🍒    Credit card spends in foreign currency to attract 20% TCS : Foreign currency payments such as digital subscriptions to publications or goods bought on foreign ecommerce sites through international credit cards will count toward an individual's Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) account and attract 20% tax collected at source (TCS), officials said. However, if these purchases are made in Indian rupees, they will not be counted against LRS and face any TCS, said one of them. According to the officials cited, corporate cards given to employees for official expenditure overseas will also not attract TCS, as these expenses are covered under residual current account transactions outside the LRS. - economic times

🍒    Senior citizens go big on small savings scheme :  The collections under the government's small savings scheme for senior citizens more than tripled in April, as those eligible scrambled to take advantage of the budget move that doubled the deposit limit, a senior finance ministry official said. The fresh mop-up under the scheme breached ₹10,000 crore in April, the first month when the enhanced limit kicked in, compared with the usual deposit of about ₹3,000 crore for this month, the official told ET. He expected such inflows to remain strong in the coming months as well. - Economic Times

🍒    NCLT approves Innova Captab's resolution plan for Sharon Bio : The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) Mumbai-bench has approved Rs. 256.4 crore resolution plan of Innova Captab for Sharon Bio-Medicine in its order on May 17. Innova Captab resolution plan was approved by 79.28% voting share of the members of the Committee of Creditors (CoC) ,according to the NCLT order. Innova Captab and Tirupati Medicare have submitted their resolution plans to the Committee of Creditors (CoC) in September 2022. Tirupati's resolution plan was 25% lower than Innova Captab. - economic times

🍒    REC plans to increase loan book by two-fold to Rs 10 lakh crore by 2030 : State-owned REC Ltd plans to raise the share of renewable energy in its loan portfolio to around 25-30% by FY30 from the current 6.8%, chairman and managing director Vivek Kumar Dewangan said on Thursday. The non-banking financing company would expand its loan book under its renewable energy portfolio to ₹2.4 lakh crore by FY30 to achieve this target. The company's current loan book is ₹4.35 lakh crore, which it plans to raise to ₹10 lakh crore by the given timeline. The share of conventional power in the company's loan book currently is around 39%, Dewangan said.- Economic Times

🍒    Rupee falls 10 paise to 82.35 against US dollar in early trade : The rupee depreciated 10 paise to 82.35 against the US dollar in early trade on Wednesday, weighed down by the strength of the American currency in the overseas market and a negative trend in domestic equities. At the interbank foreign exchange, the domestic unit opened at 82.29 against the dollar, then fell to 82.35, registering a decline of 10 paise over its last close. On Tuesday, the rupee settled at 82.25 against the dollar. - Business Line

🍒    Sensex, Nifty rebound after three-day slump; IT and banking stocks shine : The 30-share BSE Sensex climbed 297.94 points or 0.48 per cent to settle at 61,729.68 helped by fag-end buying. During the day, the benchmark faced volatile trends, hitting a high of 61,784.61 and a low of 61,251.70. The NSE Nifty advanced 73.45 points or 0.41 per cent to end at 18,203.40. Among the Sensex firms, Tata Motors jumped over 3 per cent. Tech Mahindra, Infosys, HCL Technologies, Axis Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, ICICI Bank, UltraTech Cement and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the other major gainers. NTPC, Asian Paints, Titan and Power Grid were among the laggards. - Business Line

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