Technical Snag At RBI's Liquidity Management Facility For Banks Resolved

Technical glitch on Reserve Bank of India's automated sweep-in and sweep-out system on Tuesday has been resolved, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The snag on RBI's ASISO facility on e-Kuber platform, which enables banks to manage their day-to-day liquidity requirements, withheld lenders from accessing the platform on Wednesday.

Banks use it to park funds at RBI's standing deposit facility and borrow at its marginal standing facility. The money market operations statement, which details liquidity position of the banking system, is usually up by 9 a.m. every day. But, the release was up only by 2 p.m.

RBI mandates banks to park 4.5% of their net deposits with RBI, and must maintain at least 90% of this requirement on a daily basis. Depending on needs, banks tap RBI's marginal standing facility to access funds from the central bank.

Further, bank officials in Treasury rooms were largely unperturbed by the technical glitch as most banks maintain the minimum cash requirements set by RBI, a treasury official with a big public sector bank told NDTV Profit on the condition of anonymity.

Banks, who did not use the ASISO facility and managed their funding needs manually in the reverse repo and MSF windows, were not affected by the snag, another trader said on the condition of anonymity.

This is the first time the central bank's e-Kuber portal failed since it was set up in 2020. The platform was put in place to optimise human resource deployment during Covid-19.

"...to provide eligible LAF/MSF participants greater flexibility in managing their end of the day cash reserve ratio balances, the Reserve Bank has decided to provide an optional automated sweep-in and sweep-out (ASISO) facility in its e-Kuber system," RBI had said in its release in 2020.

Under this facility, banks set an amount to keep as balances in their current accounts with RBI at the end of the day. Depending upon this pre-set amount, marginal standing facility and reverse repo bids, as the case may be, are generated automatically without any manual intervention at the end of the day.

The ASISO facility gets punched in around midnight on a daily basis, but on Tuesday, funds were neither debited nor credited due to a technical issue, according to Treasury officials.

RBI did not immediately respond to NDTV Profit's query for comment.