Bob Prefers To Be Part Of Wage Deal Over Basic And Da

The board of Bank of Baroda has decided to be part of an industry-wide wage settlement in the banking sector for determining basic pay plus dearness allowance.

The Indian Banks Association (IBA) had sought the views of its members on whether they would prefer to negotiate bilaterally or to be part of an industry wide settlement covering all issues or, as a third alternative, be part of a industry wide settlement on basic plus DA and leave other issues to be sorted out at the individual bank level. BoB has taken the lead in finalising its stand and it is expected that all other member banks would convey their decisions to the IBA within next ten days.

While we would like to be part of the industry wide settlement in case of basic plus DA, we would be negotiating with our staff bilaterally to determine productivity linked incentives, said K Kannan, chairman and managing director, Bank of Baroda, while addressing a press conference to announce the 1997-98 half yearly results of the bank.

Kannan said that the appropriate productivity indicators need to be identified. It might be recalled that IBA had appointed the National Productivity Council to identify the benchmarks for measuring productivity in the banking sector.

Kannan said that the bank had an efficient and committed staff and this has been one of the factors that helped the bank in posting a 10.3 per cent growth in gross profit in the first half of this year.

For instance gross profit per employee has gone up from Rs 1.69 lakh in March 1997 to Rs 1.94 lakh by September 1997. There has also been an improvement in the business per employee with this figure moving up from Rs 106.33 lakh in March 1997 to Rs 114 lakh by September 1997.

The cost to income ratio has also declined during this period from 53.47 to 51.19.