Interviews for heads of four PSU fin institutes to be held on June 22-23

Interviews to appoint heads of four public sector financial institutions (FIs), including Sidbi, IIFCL and Exim Bank, are scheduled to be held on June 22 and 23.

The panel comprising of Financial Services Secretary, Additional Secretary and other experts will hold interviews to find heads of four public sector financial institutions, and not Banks Board Bureau (BBB), sources said.

The panel will interview about 19 shortlisted applicants, sources said, adding about 6 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, including two Joint Secretaries of Finance Ministry itself, have been shortlisted for interview, which may raise issue of conflict of interest.

However, the exact reason for BBB not conducting the interview for heads of FIs is not known, but the new mechanism has got Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) approval, sources said.

BBB, set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2016, was entrusted with the task of finding right candidates for the executive heads of state-owned banks and financial institutions.

Other members of the panel include former chairperson of Allahabad Bank Shubhalakshmi Panse, IndAsia Chairman Pradip Shah and IIM Indore Director R T Krishnan will select heads of India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL), Export- Import Bank of India (Exim Bank), Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) and IFCI.

Some of these organisations has been running without full -time managing directors for the past 6 months.

The post of MD at the country's oldest financial institution IFCI has been vacant since December 12, while vacancy for the head of IIFCL will come up in June.

At the same time, Sidbi has no regular managing director since December, while an additional charge of EXIM Bank Managing Director (MD) was given to its Deputy MD David Rasquinha for a period of six months effective February 21.

Applications from the eligible candidates were invited on March 20 for IFCI and IIFCL, while the last date for Exim Bank was March 15 and for Sidbi it was March 17.