Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India is virtually being run from a war-room at a city facility manned by just around 90 critical staff as the nation’s monetary authority works to insulate the financial system from disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The facility, operational from March 19 as part of the Business Contingency Plan (BCP), was up and running in 24 hours of the central bank taking a decision to this effect, according to an official. The war-room is in fact manned by 90 most critical staff from the Reserve Bank, 60 key personnel from its 600-people strong workforce from its external vendors and around 70 facility staff.
The operation is so controlled for the sake of security and health of the personnel as also of the system that the BCP manual allows only half of the 90 staff to be present at any given time and the rest are on standby.
“This is the first of its kind BCP implementation by any central bank in the world and is also the first in our history because even during the World War II we did not have any such facility,” the official from RBI informed Sunday.
The most critical functions that the war-room handles are debt management, reserve management and monetary operations.
Under the BCP, other data centres of the RBI run critical systems like the SFMS (Structured Financial Messaging System), RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) and NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer). There is also ‘e-Kuber’ that includes services for the central and state governments’ transactions, and inter-bank transactions, among others.
“This is a model being attempted first time ever in our financial system and perhaps anywhere in the world. The normal BCP is for software hardware problems, fire, or other natural calamities and no one has such a plan as the RBI has put in place to fight the coronavirus pandemic,” informed the official.
“What is also unique is that no national institutions or central banks anywhere in the world have a BCP for pandemics where the people also maintain social distancing in accordance with established protocols. This includes donning hazmat suits as well,” the official added.
On a normal day, the RBI, which handles billions of transactions, is served by around 14,000 employees spread across its 31 regional offices and the central office here. And the most critical operations mentioned above are handled by around 1,500 of them.
For more than a week now, only around 10 per cent of the staff is coming to the central office which houses around 2,000 people, according to RBI union sources since the outbreak of the coronavirus.
PTI