Public sector banks should be freed of constraints: Rajan

05 Jul 2019 Evaluate

Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan has said that public sector banks (PSBs) might perform far better if they are freed from some of the constraints they operate under such as paying above the private sector for low-skilled jobs and paying below the private sector for senior management positions, having to respond to government diktats on strategy or mandates, or operating under the threat of CVC/CBI scrutiny. However, he felt that such freedom typically requires distance from the government, so long as PSBs are majority-owned by the government, they may not get that distance.


Rajan also expressed view that there is no guarantee that privatization will be a panacea. He added that much of the discussion on privatization seems to make assumptions based on ideological positions. He noted that some private banks have been poorly governed. He said 'Instead, we need to recognise that ownership is just one contributor to governance and look at pragmatic ways to improve governance across the board. There certainly is a case to experiment by privatising one or two mid-sized public sector banks and reducing the government stake below 50 per cent for a couple of others, while working on governance reforms for the rest.'

Former RBI governor has argued that 'rather than continuing a never-ending theoretical debate, we will then actually have some evidence to go on’. Some political compromises will be needed to allow the process to go through, but so long as the newly privatised banks are not totally hamstrung in their operational flexibility as a result of these compromises, this will be an experiment worth undertaking.

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