oppn parties Breaking: Will There Be Mega-Mergers Of PSU Banks In A Couple Of Days?

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
Breaking: Will There Be Mega-Mergers Of PSU Banks In A Couple Of Days?

By Sunil Garodia

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

A freelance journalist and researcher, Pratim Ranjan Bose (@pratimbose), has tweeted that all PSU bank officers have been asked by the government to remain available for duty on Saturday, 10th August and Sunday, 11th August. This, he says, points to a major disruption in the banking sector. He says there might be a merger of PSU banks to create 4 or 5 mega entities on the lines of China. He also reports that the PSU bank chiefs are having a meeting with the Department of Financial Services under the Finance Ministry, after having met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman a couple of days ago. He also reports that tests have been carried out to synchronize the core banking CBS systems of which there are two kinds in use. The SBI and some other banks use TCS developed BaNCS while the Bank of Baroda and some others use Finacle developed by Infosys.

If this report turns out to be true and a major disruption in the form of mega-mergers is carried out, the government would have made its first big move in the financial services sector. Indian PSU banks have eroded most of their capital due to bad loans. The funds needed for recapitalization are huge and unavailable. Hence, merging them to form big entities will solve many problems, provided economies of scale are availed, multiple branches are closed down and staff strength whittled down to the optimum required. These banks will be able to compete with their global peers and not shy away from global deals. If the banking system is cleaned and if banks start lending again, the economy might yet recover from the debilitating state it is in now.