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

News Snippets

  • NCLT initiates bankruptcy proceedings against former Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot for defaulting on loans of Rs 6158cr as personal guarantor in two group companies
  • LIC approves 1:1 bonus share issue
  • Gold and silver futures also go down by 0.7% and 2.2% respectively
  • Stocks tumbled again on Monday as crude prices rose: Sensex went down by 703 points and Nifty by 207 points
  • Supreme Court refuses to cancel the land-for-jobs FIR against Lalu Prasad
  • The spectre of El Nino haunts India: IMD predicts 'below normal ' monsoon this year
  • Labour protest over increase in wages by 35% (as per Haryana example) turns violent in Noida, nearly 200 were detained by the police
  • Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said that the delimitation exercise must be carried out after the Census is complete
  • PM Modi says Parliament is on the verge of creating history as the Houses get ready to take up the women's reservation bills
  • Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran said that TCS COO Aarthi Subramanian is conducting a thorough inquiry to establish facts and identify individuals involved in the sexual harassment allegations at the company's Nashik office
  • Asha Bhonsle laid to rest with full state honours on Monday in Mumbai
  • AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal once again approached the Delhi HC to request the recusal of a judge from his case
  • Candidates Chess: R Vaishali on the verge of creating history, but needs two wins - one with black pieces - against formidable opponents to emerge as the challenger
  • Rohit Sharma, who retired hurt in the match versus RCB, underwent scans for possible hamstring injury
  • IPL: Abhishek Sharma fails for SRH but Ishan Kishan (91) shines. Then, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi fails for RR and SRH bolwers, especially unheralded Praful Hinge (4 for 24) and Sakib Hussain (4 for 24) win it for SRH. This was the first loss for table-toppers RR
Supreme Court questions Election Commission about SIR SOP and why logical discrepancy was introduced only in Bengal
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. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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.