Mumbai, March 16: With the total toll of positive coronavirus cases rising to 116 in India, Reserve Bank of India on Monday issued a statement and asked all banks to take appropriate measures. RBI also asked the banks to put in place business continuity plans to prevent any disruption of services due to the rising cases of deal with coronavirus outbreak.

Issuing the statement on Monday, RBI said, "As you are aware, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) a pandemic indicating significant and ongoing person-to-person spread in multiple countries, with the uncertainty about the extent of spread and the likely impact on the global economy. Several confirmed cases have also been detected in India, which highlight the need of a co-ordinated strategy for handling the emerging situations for protecting the resilience of the Indian financial system." RBI Says Ready for COVID-19 Impact on Indian Economy, Eases Norm on US Dollar Transactions to Provide Liquidity to Forex Market.

Apart from this, RBI asked the banks to take steps as a part of their existing operational and business continuity plans. They include:

  1. Devising strategy and monitoring mechanism concerning the spread of the disease within the organisation, making timely interventions for preventing further spread in case of detection of infected employees including travel plans and quarantine requirements as well as avoiding spread of panic among staff and members of the public.

  2. Taking stock of critical processes and revisiting Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in the emerging situations/scenarios with the aim of continuity in critical interfaces and preventing any disruption of services, due to absenteeism either driven by the individual cases of infections or preventive measures.

  3. Taking steps of sharing important instructions/ strategy with the staff members at all levels, for soliciting better response and participation and sensitizing the staff members about preventive measures/steps to be taken in suspected cases, based on the instructions received from health authorities, from time-to-time.

  4. Encourage their customers to use digital banking facilities as far as possible.

  5. Assess the impact of supervised entities on their balance sheet, asset quality, liquidity, etc. arising out of potential scenarios such as further spread of COVID-19 in India and its effect on the economy, contagion from wider disruption in the global economy and the global financial system, etc.

  6. Constitute a Quick Response Team for monitoring the situation closely , which shall provide regular updates to the top management on significant developments and act as a single point of contact with regulators or outside institutions or agencies.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 16, 2020 04:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).