Letters: Level playing field

With reference to Anup Roy’s piece, “Bad loan crisis shows signs of subsiding, says analysts” (May 11), public sector banks (PSB) continue to be the whipping boys for non-performing assets (NPA) created in the private sector.

 

All through, the comparisons have been regarding the percentages of gross and net NPAs accumulated in public and private sector banks. Rarely is there any reportage about the context of formation of the State Bank of India, nationalisation of banks, current business mix or the share in banking business held by the two categories of banks. It should be kept in mind that both categories of banks are getting their resources from public deposits and are serving the same clientele.

 

Stricter and prudent classification of stressed assets at the instance of the Reserve Bank of India doesn’t change the health of such assets. If PSBs have to live up to the expectations of nationalisation, they need a level playing field in choice of clientele, area of operation, sectors to be financed and more importantly in managing human resource-related issues, including recruitment and compensation packages of staff.

 

If some unremunerative or loss-making sectors, including agriculture and social sectors, have to be financed by banks for policy reasons, they should be identified by the government and entrusted to banks for financing on mutually agreed terms. These will include compensation for losses. Here the criterion should be specialisation in work, not a differentiation between public and private sector banks.

 

A major portion of the so-called “stressed assets of banks” are in the private sector. All of us continue to blame the banking regulator and the PSBs. The latter are abused as conduits for mobilisation of deposits from the public and transfer of public resources to private hands by design. If citizens decided to keep their hard-earned savings in reliable private sector banks only (this is the impression analysts are trying to build in the minds of depositors), how will PSBs misuse public funds?

 

Let us ponder over the matter and voice our opinion. Taking this debate forward will be in public interest.

 

                M G Warrier   Thiruvananthapuram

 

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