CTUs support protest against privatisation of banks
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, July 18 2022: The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Sectoral Federations/ Associations has opposed the Central government's policy for privatisation of banks and extended support to the united struggle of bank employees and officers as well as their call for protest against the policy in front of the Parliament on July 21 .

A statement of the joint platform stated that the Central government has been continuously making attempts to privatise public sector banks as part of the government's overall policy of economic liberalisation and privatisation.

Various committees appointed by the Government have also unfailingly echoed the Government's views and repeatedly recommended privatisation of banks.

The recent report presented by Poonam Gupta of National Council of Applied Economic Research along with former vice-chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagaria has also suggested privatisation of the entire public sector banks.

However, it is important to keep in mind that in a developing country like India, the banks, which are dealing with the huge public savings, are needed to be in public sector because of the bitter experience in the past where many private banks collapsed and people lost their precious savings.

Today total deposits in the banks are more than Rs 165 lakh crore and the top priority is the safety of this people's money.

Further, for the development of country's economy, these deposits have to be utilised in important and needy sectors of the economy.

Only public sector banks extend loans to priority sectors like agriculture, employment generation, poverty reduction, health and education, women's empowerment, credit to small, medium and cottage industries, exports, among others.

Private sector banks are interested in giving loans only where profits are more and assured and not for social needs of the country.

"We have seen in the last five decades that large number of bank branches have been opened in the remote rural areas only by the public sector banks to reach out to the common people and private banks do not open branches in these areas citing non-profitable as the reason," the statement said.

There is no case for privatisation of public sector banks because it is only the big private corporate companies which are the major defaulters of huge bank loans due to which banks are incurring large amounts towards provisions, write offs and haircuts.

Handing over the banks to the private sector makes no sense at all, it continued.

"We are totally opposed to privatisation of our public sector banks which are the main engines of our economic development.

It is notable the Bank Unions under the banner of United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) have been waging a relentless battle against the moves of the government to privatise the banks.

Their struggle also exposes the moves of the government to privatise other core sectors of our economy, such as the Railways, Coal, Defence, and other PSUs, which we have been continuously opposing," the statement added.

Comment