Open Source Content Management

 (Image Courtesy: FTAF)

 

 

Every global crisis serves as an opportunity for international governance bodies to reinvent or revamp their respective regulatory framework. Paris-based anti-money laundering (AML) authority Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the latest case in point.

FTAF is currently revisiting its AML and counter financing of terrorism (CFT) regulatory guidelines in the wake of growing terror incidents sponsored by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the West.

FTAF is now firing all cylinders on CFT front after ISIL-linked Paris terror attack in November 2015 and subsequent mass shooting in California by couple of Pakistan origin. 

FTAF says it is determined to “contribute to efforts to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL as a terrorist organisation.”

(Edited Image Courtesy:PIB)

 

“As managing director and CEO since 2009, she has brought India’s largest private bank a global vision and impressive returns, while also reaching out to the nation’s masses with branches in remote villages where banks simply didn’t exist.”

This is how Mr. Anshu Jain, Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank, profiled ICICI Bank CEO Ms. Chanda Kochhar, in the Time  Magazine, which included her in its annual list of the World's 100 most influential people released on 16th April, 2015. 

Mr. Jain's perception has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It should be read along the disclosures contained in three different reports tabled in Parliament, the latest one of which was presented on 27th April 2015. 

The latest one from Public Accounts Committee (PAC) revealed ICICI Bank has paid Rs 54.80-crore penal interest on Rs 164.60 crore that the latter wrongly took from the Government under a farm loan waiver scheme. It was implemented by UPA regime during two-year period ending 30th June 2010.  

(Edited image courtesy- rsby.gov.in)

 

The Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s announcement of three insurance schemes for the poor is a classical case of old wine in new bottle. It is pertinently more a case of oversight of plethora of existing schemes and similar announcements made by his predecessors including two stalwarts from Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government.

Instead of consolidating diverse social security schemes, Mr. Jaitley added three more to the existing basket of social security schemes. 

One can group Government-funded Social security insurance schemes into three categories – health insurance, life insurance and pension insurance. 

As many as 10 statutory insurance schemes from each of these categories are already operating under the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act 2008. These include Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), Aam Aadmi Bima Yojna (AABY), National Family Benefit Scheme and Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS). 

The flagship scheme RSBY has ironically got a raw deal in the 2015-16 Budget through name change as well as massive cut in funds allocation.  

Moreover, in his anxiety to play the social welfare card to outwit UPA, Mr. Jaitley overlooked the urgency for the much-delayed bank and non-banking deposit insurance reforms. These are urgently needed to shore up public savings and to strengthen the stability of the non-performing assets-strained financial system.