FinMin comes under panel’s fire
Dec. 17: Expressing concern over soaring food inflation, a parliamentary panel said it was alarmed over the steep hike in prices of sugar, pulses and potatoes during the past six months.
“Most households in the country are aware of the situation without the statistical confirmation,” said the parliamentary standing committee on finance noting that the prices of pulses, sugar and potatoes went up by 50 to 100 per cent in the past six months, with sugar prices registering the sharpest gain. To address the issue, the parliamentary standing committee has asked the government to formulate a comprehensive food pricing and management policy, which will not only provide relief to the common man but will prove to be an antidote for the growing economic imbalance in the country.
“The reality is that the brunt of the price rise is being borne by the common man, particularly the impoverished, as they find their real incomes shrinking by the day,” said the standing committee report.
The parliamentary panel has cautioned the government that the impact of the rising food prices will eventually be on the prices of manufactured articles, leading to a vicious inflationary spiral in the economy.
Attempting to apportion the blame for the situation, the standing committee said the department of economic affairs under the finance ministry, responsible for formulating price policies and management of inflation at the macro level, failed to intervene timely and squar-ely address the burning issue with due seriousness. “In such a dismal scenario, we urge the government to overcome its inertia and come to grips with the reality of unabated rise in the prices of essential commodities,” said the standing committee on finance chaired by the BJP MP, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi. The committee has further said that considering the momentum in the food prices, it is time to have a focused ‘food price index’ exclusively for essential food items like rice, wheat, cereals, pulses, sugar, edible oils and vegetables to accurately reflect the price situation in these commodities.
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I like to place following Questions before RBI
1. Are you satisfied with balance sheet published by PSBs?
2. Are you sure that all bad advances are truly declared as Non Performing Assets as per norms set by RBI?
3. Are you hopeful and confident that banks will enthusiastically finance to poor and really needy small traders and manufacturers or they will continue to indulge in bulk financing or investing in MFs?
4. Is it not true that banks are intrinsically growing weak due to faulty policies, faulty advances, weak and ineffective recovery mechanism, deficient monitoring due to inadequate manpower as also lack of involvement and due to humiliation to honest workers and whimsical promotions to those who are corrupt and flatterers of bosses?
5. Don’t you believe that lobby of corrupt officers surrounding CMD of a bank may spoil the health of the bank and sooner or the later exposure of cooked up balance sheet will come on the floor endangering the hard earned money of poor depositors?
6. If yes have you taken any step to give respect to human capital? Will you lodge inquiry of top 50 persons of a bank , look into advances sanctioned by them in last two three decades, ascertain quantum of advances disbursed by such so called star performers which became NPA , which were written off or where bank had to sacrifice huge money in compromise settlement.
7. Will you look into why senior officers are superseded in promotion process and transferred to rural or critical areas?
8. Will you ascertain whether due respect is given to transfer policies, rural posting policy or North east posting policy, or priority sector lending policy or loan waiver policy?
9. Are you aware that flatterers are working in Metros for decades and decades and these officers ultimately causes losses to bank,?
10. Will you try to understand the basic reason of 23 banks going bankrupt and forcefully merged with large banks in the past?
11. Will you try to know why one after other cooperative banks are asked by RBI to pull down their shutters?
12. Are you happy with performance of regional rural banks and their actual health?
13. Do you also believe that the talk of merger and consolidation of banks is needed only to hide the malady and irregularities of weak banks?
14. Are you satisfied with the work done by vigilance departments o f various banks and central vigilance departments?
15. Are you happy with rating agencies rating banks and team of Chartered Accountants certifying the correctness of balance sheet of banks?
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