Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday, the last day of a two-day bank strike against the privatization programme, that the government has no plans to privatize all public sector banks in the world. When public sector banks are privatized, Sitharaman said that all measures will be taken to protect the interests of current workers. She made the remark at a press conference in New Delhi, where she declared that the Union cabinet had approved the bill to create the Development Finance Institution (DFI). The finance minister said that banks in the region, including the State Bank of India, needed to grow in size (SBI). “We want banks that can meet the country’s aspirational needs”, Sitharaman said.
Nirmala Sitharaman, explaining the government’s privatization strategy, said it was focused on the public enterprise policy. She promised that, as specified in the budget, the government will have a presence in the financial sector. “Not all banks will be privatized,” the finance minister said emphatically. “We certainly have to bear in mind that these privatized institutions will continue to operate after the privatization,” Sitharaman said of the institutions that are expected to be privatized.
“We continue to see more equity in financial institutions. We just want their workers to be able to do the tasks, because more people [should be able] to inject resources into them to keep them sustainable,” she said. She also confirmed that all bank employees’ rights, including their wages and pensions, would be covered. Sitharaman said, “It will all be taken care of.” The intention to privatize several public sector banks, according to the finance minister, had been carefully considered. With a social media tweet, Sitharaman rejected Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the bank privatization move.
Rahul Gandhi said the government was “privatizing gains and nationalizing loss” in a tweet. “I would like him to engage in serious discussions rather than throw these kinds of two-liners every now and then,” Sitharaman referred to the critique. “He accuses us of privatizing benefit while his (UPA) government privatized taxpayer funds.” The UPA government privatized the resources of taxpayers. And, most likely, for the betterment of one family,” she said. “His grandmother [Indira Gandhi] may have nationalized the banks, but the nationalization of failure happened under the UPA,” Sitharaman said.
