While demanding action by government on several long pending demands, INBEF, the banking unit of INTUC, has also proposed a loan restructuring scheme for farmers
The Indian National Bank Employees Federation (INBEF), banking wing of INTUC said it will hold a day long dharna at Jantarmantar in Delhi on 4 March 2016 for several long pending demands as well as for introducing an agriculture loan restructuring policy for farmers.
"Contrary to introduction of 5:25 policy for big corporate houses, INBEF has demanded introduction of 2:10 and 3:12 policy for restructuring of agricultural loans of farmers. Poor farmers are suffering year after year due to bad weather conditions and do not have any income for repayment of their loans. Thousands of farmers are committing suicides as no one is taking serious interest in resolving their problems," says Subhash S Sawant, General Secretary of INBEF in a statement.
INBEF says it is on the path of agitation since long on the burning issue of non-performing assets (NPAs), writing off of huge quantum of bad debts, one time settlement of mounting bad debts in a throw away price in the banking industry, which are paving the way to big corporates to enjoy the public funds at their whims and caprices.
"As per the latest statement made by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, the NPAs of public sector banks (PSBs) will reach Rs3.15 lakh crore by March, 2016 and the percentage of NPAs will be over 6% of loans. Over 80% of the NPAs are by corporate houses. NPA culture is built to make loot of public money in absence of stringent action against bad borrowers. A total of 27 PSBs have written off a staggering Rs1.14 lakh crore of bad loans during 2012-15, with the last fiscal alone witnessing a steep 53% rise in write-offs as part of the balance-sheet clean up. The bad debts written-off between 2004 and 2015 were Rs2.11 lakh crore, a huge loot of public money," INBEF said.
It further said, "The RBI, instead of taking strong action against the wilful defaulters has allowed flexible structuring of long term project loans to infrastructure and core industries in the name of 5:25 policy. Under this policy loans can be restructured for repayment up to 25 years or more. This policy is framed with a view to help large corporates. This facilitates misappropriation of public money and RBI may lose surveillance over the big ticket borrowers after scheduled commercial Banks exercise their powers to reconstruct such loans. We oppose this reconstruction policy and demand its withdrawal immediately, and take immediate steps for recovery of such loans."
Calling the government's decision to infuse capital in selected eight banks as discrimination, the employee union said that this will adversely affect existence of weak bank, who are in dire need of capital. "The Government in September 2015, has infused Rs13,955 crore capital in eight banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda (BoB), Punjab National Bank (PNB), Canara Bank, Dena Bank, Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank. The weak banks will not be provided capital by the government. This decision of the government is against the weak banks which are in need of support. The decision will adversely affect the existence of weak banks. It is indirectly aimed at merger or closures of the weak banks or privatising them," it added.
INBEF said it strongly feels that the onus of decreasing net profit of the nationalised banks despite huge increase in gross profit shouldn't be transferred on the shoulder of the crores of depositors as well as the bank employees. The income of the senior citizens who are carrying on their livelihood out of the interest earned by them from their Bank deposits are decreasing steadily due to decrease in interest rates, it said.
The bank union also demanded updation of pension for employees, and implementation of government guidelines on transfer of female employees. "We strongly oppose the moves of the management to victimise the trade union activists as well as withdrawing the trade union rights of INBEF," it further said.
Here is the scheme proposed by the union on re-structuring of agricultural loans for farmers...
