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Fresh trouble hits oil payments to Iran
- National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon has held a high-level meeting with officials from the Ministries of Finance, Petroleum and Natural Gas, External Affairs and the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday to work out a strategy to counter the fallout arising out of fresh U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran.
- Iran is the second biggest supplier of crude oil to India after Saudi Arabia.
- India currently pays Iran about $1 billion every month through Turkey
- There are chances that Turkey may come under pressure after a fresh round of U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran
- U.S. President Barack Obama signed a Bill into law late last month, empowering U.S. authorities to impose penalties on foreign banks dealing with the Central Bank of Iran to settle oil import payments.
73,000 villages to be covered by banks
- Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has announced that 73,000 villages not covered by banks will be covered before March-end, either with brick-and-mortar branches, mobile banking or with telephony services.
- Finance Minister expressed deep regret over the poor percolation of banking services to the countryside; even 42 years after bank nationalisation.
- Mr. Mukherjee said that barely 30,000 out of the 6.4 lakh villages in the country had bank branches.
- Our ultimate target is to cover every village with 1,000-plus population in the next three or four years.
- Mr. Mukherjee said that an exclusive financial institution with a corpus fund of Rs.500 crore would be set up soon at the national level to exclusively meet the financial requirements of the SHGs.
