By: Arpit Gupta

Telecom companies have also told the Centrethat while they can monitor BlackBerrymessenger (BBMS or chat), mobile operators didnot have the facilities to track enterprise services– the corporate email facility offered by Canada’sResearch in Motion (RIM), the maker of thesehigh-end handsets.

The telecom department officials said the Centrewill not terminate BlackBerry services fromThursday for non-compliance by operators and isset to grant an extension. Put simply, the onemillion plus BlackBerry customers in the countrywill continue to avail services on this handset.

The government has made it clear that it will notgo public with state-run BSNL until the financialperformance of the telecom PSU improves.

BSNL, which has been facing competition fromprivate players, saw its market share (GSM andWLL) declining to 11.44 per cent in June 2010from 15.64 per cent in March 2008.

Besides disinvestment, Pitroda commitee alsosuggested voluntary retirement to over one lakhstaff as part of steps to improve BSNL's financialhealth.

State-owned Bank of Baroda (BoB) is the secondmost productive lender among nationalisedbanks in terms of profit per employee during2009-10, RBI said in a report.

The RBI report released on Thursday hadcpegged profit per employee of BoB staff at Rseight lakh, The industry average is Rs 6.05 lakh.

Corporation Bank was ranked the best among 19PSU banks in terms of employee productivity witheach staff accounting for profit generation of Rs9.52 lakh.

The teaser rate in home loans is likely to stay,said HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh.

On liquidity situation, he said that it wouldcontinue to be a bit stressed in Septemberand October. "Now, the deposit rate is lowerthan the advances, so the banks are nowborrowing from RBI," he said.

However, Parekh made it clear that there is noshortage of money for government borrowingprogramme. Parekh hopes that the situationwill ease from November.

The Reserve Bank has postponed by a year itsplan to open banking facilities in all villages witha population of over 2,000 till March 2012, thusbringing its policy in line with the government'sbudget announcement.

Low population density, inhospitable terrain, lawand order problems and non-availability of basicinfrastructure had been indicated as the mainimpediments in providing banking facilities inthese areas.

The apex bank also plans to undertake quarterlymonitoring of the progress in opening bankingoutlets in un-banked villages.

The RBI on Tuesday said banks' investments inthe National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI) and the United Stock Exchange of India Ltd(USEIL) will not be counted for calculating theircapital markets exposure.

Within this overall ceiling, banks will also nothold direct investment in the form of holdingequities, or other forms of capital more than 20per cent of its networth.

USEIL, the new bourse for currency derivatives,began operations on Monday and witnessed goodvolumes in the first day of trading. After the NSEand MCX, the USE is the third bourse offeringcurrency trading in the country.