Mumbai, Oct 19: State Bank of India has received a lower than expected response so far for its two special schemes introduced for retaining Resurgent India Bonds (RIBs) proceeds as non-resident indians favoured to park their funds in Foreign Currency Non-Resident (Banks) (FCNR-B) accounts. "The customers are depending more upon the FCNR(B) deposit scheme over the two special schemes launched to retain RIB proceeds aggregating USD 5.5 billion with the bank", a senior SBI official told reporters here today.
This phenemenon occurred possibly due to years of relationship of customers with particular branches as also the concept of an offshore banking unit was still very new in the country, he added.
However, he declined to divulge the amount retained by NRIs with the bank.
SBI Chairman A K Purwar had last month said Pravasi Samriddhi and Pravasi Vaibhav were introduced to retain 30-40 per cent (about USD two billion) of proceeds of RIBs, which matured on October 01, and would remain open for a fortnight.
The official said the bank was reviewing the time period for closing these schemes, however, they would remain open for some more time.
Asked whether the bank was confident of meeting their expectation of retaining close to USD two billion with itself, he said "we are inching towards it".
Bureau Report