No privatisation of public sector banks : P K Bansal

Kolkata, Mar 30 (UNI) Union minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal today ruled out any possibility of bringing down government stakes in public sector banks below 51 per cent, thereby ending all apprehensions within the banking sector.

Inaugurating a seminar on "Emerging Financial Sector Reforms: Banking and Insurance", organised by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce(BCC) here, the Union minister made it absolutely clear that the Centre had no intension to dilute the governmernt share in public sector banks below 51 per cent to maintain its majority ownership and assured about 600,000 bank employees throughout the country that no further attempt would be made to privatise them .

"Though some constituents of the previous NDA government had indeed made certain moves in this regard,the present UPA government had negated them completely as they would serve no purpose for anyone", Mr Bansal pointed out.

Referring to the stupendous growth in the country's Banking and Insurance sectors in the wake of their reforms, the Union minister said these had brought out the real strength of the Indian economy.

He said though the government had stipulated 40 per cent credit exposure for the priority sector through banks, the amount of loans to the agriculatural sector had been fixed at 18 per cent and hoped that the target would be achieved by all banks by motivating their workforce.

During the current fiscal Rs 2,25,000 crores had been dispersed to more than six million farmers under various agricultural schemes to achieve the target, he said adding that last year Rs 1,90,000 crores were disbursed for the same purposes.

Regarding the prospect of the much-talked about consolidation and merger among different public sector banks in order to place themselves in the global arena, Mr Bansal agreed that the attempt was yet to taste any major success beacuse of some technical difficultues.

So far only a few minor banks had joined hands and consolidated their operations for better governance, he said and felt that it was still a long way to go for the Indian banks to become a major global player no matter how powerful they were within the country.

Welcoming the basic features of the proposed BASEL II norms, to which all banks must comply by March 2009,the union minister said when fully implemented it would open a new window of opprtunity for further reforms in the Banking sector and make them much more customer friendly.

Also speaking on the occasion Chaiman and Managing Director of United Bank of India(UBI)P K Gupta said reforms in the banking sector had made the country an economic powerhouse in the world.

Without a succeful reformn process in the banking and insurance sector the country could not have achieved nine per cent GDP growth, he felt.

Dwelling on the performance of UBI, Mr Gupta announced his plan to double the Bank's overall turnover to Rs 100,000 crores in another two years from Rs 50,000 crores now. "We have also introduced internet banking and so far brought 89 per cent of UBI's services under Core Banking Solutions(CBS)", he said.

Among others BCC President and noted industrialist A K Agarwala spoke on the occasion and brought to the notice of the union minister several issues to speed up the banking and insurance reform processes further.

UNI