P. Chidambaram

The bank begins operations with seven branches. It will be a universal bank, but will primarily serve women, taking care of their special needs and requirements. The number of branches will go up to 25 by March-end.

India's GDP growth slowed to 5 percent in the 2012/13 fiscal year that ended in March, its worst performance since it grew by 3.9 percent in 2002/03.

The CPI inflation, measured by movement in the retail prices of food items, soared to a seven-month high of 10.09 per cent in October. The wholesale price-based inflation too shot up to 8-month high of 7 per cent in the same month.

A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the CBI to tread cautiously in policy matters, it was the turn of the Finance Minister to dwell at length on the functioning of the agency.

The low penetration in Indian general insurance segment got India's finance minister worried but insurance watchdog, IRDA, is ensuring they leave no stone unturned to set things right.

Speaking about the NSEL crisis FM says it will not spillover to the stock and commodity exchanges run by Financial Technologies.

The Minister also expressed the government's resolve to extend full support to new investment proposals and said that corporates need not sit on cash. He asked them to start investing.

Chidambaram said that like the State Bank of India (SBI), other PSU banks should set up separate verticals to recover as much as possible from accounts that were written off.

The government has earmarked Rs 14,000 crore for capital infusion in the public sector banks during the current fiscal. All 26 banks are expected to get capital from the government.

PSUs are slated to invest about Rs 1.4 lakh crore as capex in this fiscal. The target for the first half of the fiscal is about Rs 50,000 crore and sources in the Finance Ministry say that of this, about 96 percent has already been invested. So, PSU capex targets are on track.

Finance Minister P Chidamabaram speaks about the success of the IDFC Infrastructure Fund. The minister was in Washington, the conference's venue, to grace the closure of the USD 650 million fund.

The International Monetary Fund recently lowered India‘s growth forecast from 5.6 percent to a steep 3.8 percent. Finance Minister P Chidambaram, however, believes India does not deserve this downgrade.

Chidambaram says: "First of all we are shoring up our foreign exchange reserves since the FCNRB revised policies were announced, we have had about USD 7.4 billion coming in,"

Whenever there is an issue, any political sensitivity to any economic agenda, political agenda always has an overriding effect over such decisions, says RS Sharma, former chairman of ONGC. If diesel price is not hiked, upstream companies may have to share a higher burden.

Chidambaram said the current value of the rupee was a matter of concern but that the currency had been due a fall.

The Congress party is in no mood to not let go through the Pension Bill in the Parliament. Senior leaders in the party have been reaching out to other political leaders, who have expressed their opposition to the Bill.

Public sector banks should deal strictly with wilful defaulters to check non-performing assets (NPAs) while being sympathetic towards borrowers facing difficulties, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said today.

Facing all round attack over the bad state of the economy, Government today said unleashing of more reforms was the way to deal with the situation and pressed for ending the "impasse" in coal and iron ore sectors to push growth.

A Cabinet panel cleared 18 power projects at a cost of Rs 83,772 crore, Chidambaram told a news conference.

Experts lauded Finance Minister P Chidambaram‘s efforts to shore up market sentiments and clarifications over capital control measures, but they also stressed that government needed to show more action than talks.