Mumbai, Nov 1: The State Bank of India (SBI) has received more than $2 billion so far for its `India Millennium Deposits' (IMD) programme for which the earliest closing date has been extended up to November 6.SBI claimed that "it has collected $2 billion as on Tuesday and an equivalent amount is expected to be collected in the next couple of days".
The bank is expected to mobilise about $5 billion in foreign currency deposits from non-resident Indians (NRI) and overseas corporate bodies (OCB) through IMD.
"The bank has decided to extend the earliest closing date from October 31 to November 6 because of four-day holidays in the Gulf region last week and due to this the collection of deposits under the IMD programme has affected.
Several NRIs had preferred to switch their deposits in FCNR accounts to IMD due to the last week long holidays. The conversion would be in the region of eight to 10 per cent of the total direct collections.
The IMD programme was launched on October 21 by the SBI in response to the request received from NRI customers for a long term foreign currency denominated product, the release said.
The five-year deposits are denominated in US dollar, Pound Sterling, Euro and carry interest rate at 8.50 per cent, 7.85 per cent and 6.85 per cent in that order.
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