RBI will ask banks to provide real estate data fortnightly

RBI will ask banks to provide real estate data fortnightly
The Financial Express, October 31, 2009, Page 2

fe Bureaus

Tightening its vigilance on banks exposure in real estate, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is planning to ask banks to furnish relevant data on fortnight basis. Usha Thorat, deputy governor, RBI said while increasing the provisioning cover for standard assets in commercial real estate sector, RBI, among other factors is guided by 41 % y-o-y increase in the credit to this sector.

This data is now available with a lag of two months. Attempts are on to get this return on a fortnightly basis, so that meaningful comparison of data is possible, she said while addressing a workshop organised by Indian Banks Association (IBA).

According to her RBI faces major hurdles in compiling this data in terms of quality, consistency and timeliness. Our experience shows misclassification in Basic Statistical Returns ( BSRs) data by banks still persists, perhaps due to non-alignment of codes with BSR codes.

Lack of training at branch level also could be an issue. We feel that these problems can be solved to a large extent if all customer details are fed into the core banking solution (CBS) and the CBS occupation codes are mapped exactly as per BSR occupation codes, she said. Inconsistency and misclassification issues can be avoided by ensuring that the base customer data captures all the parameters and characteristics of the customer, she explained.