No More Bulk Deposit will be allowed at the cost of small depositors and small investors.
No More short term unsecured bulk loan to corporate will be allowed to achieve lending target
Focus on Profit, Recovery of dues from defaulters, Reduce NPA, Increase Financial Inclusion will be new priorities.
Staff Ratio in Branches of all banks have to be judicious. Focus on real Human Resource Development to reduce growing frustration among staff of public sector banks.
Banks have to try to increase Return on Asset, reduce to cost to income ratio and increase per employee business and per employee profit.
No loan growth target for PSBs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finance ministry asks banks to focus on non-performing assets, loss-making branches | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manojit Saha / Mumbai Jul 20, 2012, 00:15 IST Public sector banks will not have to focus on their top line growth, as there will be no targets for them to meet credit and deposit growth for the current financial year. Instead, the finance ministry has asked the government-owned banks to focus on increasing efficiency and bringing down non-performing assets. Banks will now have targets on lowering the number of loss-making branches and cutting bad loans of regional rural banks. At the beginning of every financial year, the government-owned banks indicate their targets to the finance ministry in statements of intent. The statements consist of parameters such as business growth, low-cost deposit growth, net NPAs, net profit, etc. Banks state their targets in each of the parameters in the financial year. Their performances are reviewed at the end of the financial year. Now, the finance ministry wants banks to focus on increasing their profitability and improving the asset quality. As a result, some new parameters would come in. The finance ministry is holding meetings with each PSB bank chairman to finalise the targets. “The focus this time is on increasing the profitability,” said a PSB chairman and managing director. “We have to emphasise on parameters such as return on asset, net profit per employee, cost-to-income ratio, and staff ratio in branches, among others.” The ministry’s move to eliminate business-growth parameters comes on the back of banks scrambling for cash during quarter ends, which results in a sharp spike in interest rates. For example, in March, short-term rates went past 12 per cent while liquidity became tight, as banks rushed for funds to meet their yearly targets. Bankers said though loan and deposit growth targets are being removed, the target for growth in the current and savings account deposits — the low-cost deposits — has been retained. The ministry has been telling PSBs to raise their efficiency at a time when the government has shown commitment to adequately capitalise the lenders. Earlier, banks were asked not to start fresh ventures in non-core activities such as insurance and the asset management business, but to focus on core banking. Bankers, however, said the move to not have business growth targets might result in balance sheets becoming smaller. “With credit and deposit growth not picking up, some of the banks have already seen a contraction in the balance sheet size over the March figures,” said a senior banker. According to Reserve Bank of India data, banks’ credit registered just three per cent growth as on June end when compared with March end, while deposit growth was 5.4 per cent. Over a year, as on June 29, credit growth had fallen to 16.5 per cent from 20 per cent a year before. Deposit growth has slowed to 13.4 per cent from 18.5 per cent a year before.
While a high interest rate has been cited as one reason for slowing in credit demand, high inflation has made the real return to depositors unattractive.
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1 comment:
Any organisation can progress with some targets. The targets should be realistic and purpose oriented. Giving high targets without any specific direction or logic lead to detrioration in functioning of the organisations. So far the govt. used to unload the targets on public sector banks and the CMDs & EDs of the bank in their enthusiasm to get extensions or alternative lucrative postings used to accept or even increase the targets goals to please their bosses in the ministry. These targets used to be unloaded on Regions, which in turn further pass on to the branches in their region without any logic or increase in manpower. To achieve the deposit targets many branches approach various govt. and private organisations and very often pay bribes ranging from 1 - 2% of the deposit amount to the officials who are controlling the deposits. This is leading to corrupt practices by many branch managers as they have to rise money to pay bribes to get deposits. In this process a second set of brokers are developed in the country who approach branch managers with a proposal that they would arrange for deposits but the Branch has to sanction the proposals brought by them. In the process many unwanted / undeserving proposals are sanctioned by the Bank leading to increase in NPAs in the bank. This is also encouraged by the top executives of the bank as they have to achieve targets to get next promotions and also make money for themselves. Removal of targets - particularly by the ministry may be welcome if look at the problems in this angle. However instead of totally removing the deposit targets, the Ministry should fix targets only on increase in deposits from public and not from institutions. They should also pass orders that all govt. deposits should invariably put in PSBs and not in private banks and also make it compulsory that they should allot the banks to different Govt. depts, who should park their funds in these banks only. This to some extent reduce corrupt practices by the departments, who collect commission for parking funds as well as in banks who in their enthusiasm to get deposits also follow corrupt path.
Similarly govt should also fix targets on growth in advances, without which the banks become lethergic and lead to decline in advances. But they should fix these targets with logic and responsibilty. They should discourage various segments like real estate, to whom we are even financing at a low rate of interest and unscrupulous top executives are making money in sanctioning such proposals. The increase in advances / credit should be in consonance with the manpower avaiable in the bank and not without making sufficient arrangements for suitable man power in the bank.
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