Close on the heels of Citigroup s decision to exit retail banking business in India, South Africa’s second largest bank - FirstRand Bank - with $118 billion in assets is the latest foreign bank to exit India. The news was broken to FirstRand staff in Mumbai - its only branch - via a videoconference on Tuesday. FirstRand s exit is the second retreat by a foreign lender in India within a week after US giant Citibank announced plans to sell its consumer banking business in 13 markets, including India late last week. First Rand India is a licensed financial services provider in India and operates as a branch of FirstRand Bank South Africa. In 2019, FirstRand Bank completed 10 years of operations in India under its corporate and investment banking franchise. According to FirstRand’s Bank India’s annual report (2019-20), its deposits stood at Rs 318 crore and advances at Rs 420 crore at the end of March 2020. Its investment book was of Rs 1,208 crore.
RBI may continue buying dollars despite US monitoring
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India has amassed $100 billion since the lockdown and used it to buy US treasury bills. RBI is also among the top 10 buyers of US treasury bills.
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Kolkata/Mumbai: The central bank is likely to continue with its interventions in the foreign exchange market even after the US Treasury Department put India on its ‘currency manipulator’ watch list, industry experts told ET.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may keep buying dollars to prevent the rupee from losing export competitiveness. Sterilising the
dollar inflow and simultaneously sucking out the resulting rupee liquidity assumes importance as an inflation-targeting central bank seeks to lower the consumer price index (CPI) to levels within the mandated 4-6% band.