Narendra Modi to brainstorm with bankers on PSB reforms on January 3

New Delhi: Prime Minister, Narendra Modi will hold discussions with bankers on January 3 at Pune to draw and ‘action plan’ for reforms in the public sector banks (PSBs). Modi will be interacting with bankers on the second day of the ‘retreat’ for banks and financial institutions which is being organised to find out "what has gone wrong and what should be done both by banks as well as by the Government to improve and consolidate the position of PSBs"

The two-day retreat beginning January 2 will discuss issues like consolidation and restructuring of the PSBs to improve efficiency, capital requirement, risk profiling and debt recovery. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, top officials of the Finance Ministry and heads of PSBs will be attending the retreat, which is being called as 'Gyan Sangam'.

"The final objective would be to prepare a blue print of reform action plan once adopted which could then be implemented by the banks as well as by the Government,” according to a release. Also efforts would be to seek "out of box" ideas from prominent experts and from top level managers attending the retreat. The other topics of discussion will include financial inclusion, financial literacy, direct benefit transfer, priority sector lending, interest subvention and human resource.

Total Gross Non Performing Assets (NPAs) of Public sector banks stood at over Rs 2.43 lakh crore as on end-September 2014. The top 30 NPAs account for Rs 87,368 crore ie 35.9 per cent of total Gross NPAs of PSBs. Public sector banks require equity capital of Rs 2.4 lakh crore by 2018 to meet Basel III norms. For the current fiscal, the government has allocated Rs 11,200 crore for bank capitalisation.