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Employees of public sector banks (PSBs) including the State Bank of India (SBI) under the aegis of United Forum of Bank Unions(UFBU) had called for the two-day strike from December 16 to 17, against the move to privatise public sector banks. This is the second time that the union held a nationwide strike. It may be recalled, that UFBU had called for a two-day strike on March 15 and 16 earlier this year to protest against the government’s plan to privatise public sector banks. UFBU is an umbrella organisation of nine bank unions, and having a membership of around nine lakh members. UFBU had called for the strike to register opposition against the Centre’s move to introduce the Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 during the ongoing Winter Session of the Parliament. The bill aims to privatise public sector banks. The Bill aims to amend banking companies acquisition and transfer laws of 1970 and 1980 and the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 to achieve privatisation of two PSBs to meet disinvestment targets as stated by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget 2021-22. On the face of it, privatisation of PSUs would be welcomed on the basis of the performances between private banks and PSU banks. Performance of PSBs has deteriorated post 2011–12, on account of rising non-performing assets (NPAs). In March 2019, NPAs at PSBs were 12.6% of all advances, while the figure for private banks was 3.7%. Return on assets at PSBs was -0.9%, while that at private banks was 1.2%. These comparisons show PSUs in bad light and works in favour of privatisation. It is largely felt that privatisation of banks will make management more accountable and sensitive to the needs of the customers. Other factors weighing against PSUs is that they impose prohibitive fiscal costs on the government. Scarce government resources that could be used elsewhere are spent on keeping non-performing PSBs afloat. PSUs handle huge government funds and generally are not worried about getting government deposits unlike private banks. The other side of the story is that private sector banks concentrate on the more affluent sections of the population and the metropolitan\/urban areas, leading to financial exclusion of weaker sections of the society, particularly in the rural areas. Economist Dr Prasenjit Bose said the public sector banks were taking banking to the rural areas and ensuring financial inclusion. He feared reversal of these gains may take place if PSBs are privatised. The unions strongly feel that privatisation will harm the country as private banks would never understand their social role. They also fear that privatisation will deprive farmers, poor people from getting loans for education and other needs as profit becomes the sole motive. However, deep within the minds of lakhs of union members and many beyond the bank circles is that apprehension that the entire privatisation effort tantamount to selling PSUs to private corporate houses, many of whom have defaulted on loans from the banks and the move would also ultimately reward some well known crony capitalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Private and exclusive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}