RBI likely to convert IT draft into formal vision document

The draft vision document of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that provides direction to the IT initiatives of the financial sector is likely to be converted into a 'formal vision document', according to RBI governor Y V Reddy.

The RBI had put the Financial Sector Vision Document in public domain inviting comments and suggestions on it.

The broad areas of coverage in the draft include IT for regulation and supervision, IT and the Institute for Development Research in Banking Technology, IT for financial sector and IT for government-related functions.

Reddy, who attended the first meeting of the state-level Task Force on Urban Cooperative Banks (TAFCUB) here on Friday, told newspersons that the RBI would be assessing the training and computerisation needs of the urban cooperative banks (UCBs) in Andhra Pradesh so as to upgrade their human resources skills and technological infrastructure. RBI would train UCB personnel in this regard.

Emphasising the need for encouraging healthy UCBs to take over financially-poor UCBs, he said that the establishment of TAFCUBs would lay the foundation for the healthy development of UCBs. There are 127 UCBs in Andhra Pradesh, most of which are financially sound.

The vision document also proposed constitution of state-level TAFCUBs for the purpose of identifying potentially-viable urban cooperative banks and drawing up a time bound action plan for their revival.

The TAFCUBs will have regional directors of RBI as chairmen and local registrar of cooperative societies as the co-chairmen.

Besides, the representatives of the state governments concerned and the National Federation for Urban Cooperative Banks will be its members.

Reddy said that TAFCUBs were sought to be set up as the governance aspects of the UCBs were with state governments while the financial aspects came under the purview of the RBI.

The apex bank had asked all the state governments to constitute TAFCUBs. Till now, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat have constituted TAFCUBs.

Replying to a question, he said that the RBI was according top priority to the area of micro finance.