Mumbai: Exchange Earner's Foreign Currency (EEFC) account holders of Bank of India (BoI) will get a new deposit scheme. This was announced by BoI on Friday.

Valid up to October 31, 2008, this scheme will allow EEFC term deposits for various tenures of one, three, six, and 12 months. The maximum tenure of such fixed deposits will be 12 months.

These deposits will accept funds in three major currencies- US Dollar, Euro and British Pound. The minimum deposit requirement is 1000 denominations of any currency and in multiples of 1,000 thereafter. The maximum amount that can be deposited in these EEFC term deposits is $1 million or its equivalent amount in Euro and Pound.

This upper limit on deposits is due to the RBI regulation in this matter. "This is in pursuance to Reserve Bank of India guidelines permitting all exporters to earn interest on EEFC balances upto $1 million." BoI spokesperson said.

EEFC accounts are maintained by exporters who earn revenue in foreign currency, to maintain certain amount of the payment received in foreign currency. These accounts help exporters by letting them make foreign exchange payments for material and other goods in foreign currency without encurring repeated currency conversion charges. Plus they also have the flexibility to convert these payments to rupees when they get better conversion rates.

The rate of interest on such deposits is summarized in the table below:

Currently the EEFC accounts can only be maintained in the form of non-interest bearing current accounts.