Some public sector banks could soon receive an invitation from the government to discuss another round of mergers in the sector, a Finance Ministry official told The Economic Times. It is speculated to include Punjab National Bank (PNB), Union Bank of India(UBI) and Bank of India (BoI).
They wouldn’t like to wait for too long. If the banks are not able to provide options, then the alternate mechanism (AM) group can give suggestions, said the official to a newspaper. He hinted there could be a merger in the second or third quarter of the current fiscal.
The merger process of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank had started in October last year. On April 1, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank were merged into Bank of Baroda to form the third-largest bank in the country.
This report couldn’t be independently verified. On the flip side, some government officials do not believe now is the right time for another merger as BoI has just emerged from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) prompt corrective action (PCA) framework. The PCA is a set of guidelines set by the RBI for banks that have weak financial metrics.
The other two, PNB and UBI, are also in recovery stages, the report quoted one government official as saying.
Apart from BoI, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Bank of Maharashtra had been pulled out of the PCA framework in February.
Mergers are not the solution to every problem in the banking sector and the government should think of new alternatives other than creating too-big-to-fail structures, a senior executive at a public sector bank told the newspaper.
