Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - 22:37
New
Delhi: Government is looking at a scheme for encouraging its employees to
invest part of their 7th pay commission salary hike in a fund which would be
used for recapitalisation of state-owned banks.
High
income government official, according to officials, could be roped in to invest
in the fund by offering lucrative incentives like tax break or higher return.
As
per the proposal, higher income government staff from the rank of section
officer may be asked to shell out 50 percent of increased salary towards bank
capitalisation bonds, the officials said.
Top
officials of the finance ministry had preliminary discussion over the issue
last week, officials said. However, no decision has been taken yet, they said,
adding that Committee of Secretaries is looking into the matter and various
alternatives are being considered.
This
proposal is being considered to find more resources for recapitalisation of
public sector banks which are saddled with gross non-performing assets (NPAs)
of Rs.3.61 trillion at the end of December 2015, as against Rs.39,859 crore in
the private sector.
Gross
NPA ratio as percentage of advances rose to 7.30 percent while for private
banks, it stood at 2.36 percent as of December-end.
RBI
has asked public sector banks to clean up balancesheets by March next year.
Cleaning to books would require additional capital infusion than what has been
envisage in the ‘Indradhanush’.
Last
year, the government had announced a revamp plan ‘Indradhanush’ to infuse
Rs.70,000 crore in state-owned banks over four years, while they will have to
raise a further Rs.1.1 trillion from markets to meet their capital requirements
in line with global risk norms Basel-III. In line with the blueprint, PSU banks
were given Rs.25,000 crore in the last fiscal and an equal amount is planned
for the current fiscal.
As
per the plan, Rs.10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19. It
is believed that the government provided as much as Rs.70,000 crore in the
Union Budget 2016-17 for implementation of Seventh Pay Commission for 47 lakh
government employees and 52 lakh pensioners.
While
the Budget did not provide an explicit overall provision number, the government
had said the 7th Pay Commission hike has been built in as interim allocation
for different ministries and Budget numbers were credible.
Implementation
of the pay commission report in toto is to cost the government Rs.1.02 lakh
crore.
Source
: http://zeenews.india.com
