STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) called upon the owners and controller of the banking system to put a halt to the proposed mergers of the five associate banks with the State Bank of India (SBI). State Bank of India (SBI), having its market share gradually declining in the last year, is under the compulsion of merging the five associate banks to boost the business performance. The five associate banks are State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Patiala (SBP), State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBP), State Bank of Mysore (SBM)and State Bank of Travancore (SBT). The branches working in five states i.e. Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Rajasthan and Punjab and Haryana are functioning effectively than State Bank of India branches. AIBOA demanded that the branches of State Bank of India in five states should be merged with the five associate banks thereby declining trend can be arrested.
State Bank of India carrying a bad loan of Rs 1,00,000 crores should take steps to recover the amount of bad loans instead of the proposed merger plan of associate banks with SBI. Banking Industry handling the total business of Rs 200 lakh crores with breakup of Rs 116 lakh of deposits and advances of Rs 84 lakhs, the association members said, adding that the bad loans in the industry is hovering around Rs 20 lakh crores, the major portion of which belongs to infrastructure, coal blocks and regular piling of loans. The owners of the banking system should initiate steps with effectiveness to recover the money locked up in the bad loans on priority basis, they added. The association members demanded that the priority of the areas should be expansion of banking for a population 2,500 of Brick and Mortar plan and not consolidation of banks through the process of Mergers and Acquisitions. Another issue which needs a focused and priority attention is recovery of bad loans to have a robust banking system, they added.
