Govt to facilitate PSBs in capital raising
Mumbai, Nov 26 (UNI) Asserting that inorganic growth is one of the best ways to compete with large sized global banks, Minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal today said that the Government and Reserve Bank of India will facilitate public sector and scheduled banks in capital raising to compete with global banks after the banking sector is opened by 2009.
While delivering the keynote address at the Annual Banker's Conference on ''Indian Banking: Towards Global Best Practices'' here, Mr Bansal said that it is an endeavour of both the Government and the RBI to provide regulatory climate in terms of managerial autonomy and operational flexibility to the banking sector to meet the challenges arising due to increasing competition.
''Our banks have to rise to the challenge of increasing globlisation and internationalisation of banking services and have to face it head on,'' he added.
Mr Bansal said that the foreign exchange reserve is far in excess of the external debt which has increased more than three folds from USD 76 billion at the end of March 2003 to USD 270.18 billion at the end of October 2007.
Currently, all scheduled commercial banks have capital adequacy ratio of 12.3 per cent which is much above the international norms of 9 per cent.
Citing
an
instance
of
PricewaterhouseCoppers
report,
he
said,
''India
may
well
be
the
third
largest
banking
hub
in
the
world
by
2040.''
When
quizzed
about
the
functional
autonomy
of
the
public
sector
banks,
Mr
Bansal
said,
''The
Government
is
all
for
providing
full
autonomy
to
the
banks
and
in
near
future
it
will
become
a
reality.''
UNI