Bank Unions hold protest march; Here's are the list of demands

Key Highlight: 

• Bank Union will submit a memorandum to PM with list of demands
• Banks gross NPA rose to Rs 8.29 lakh crore in Q1FY18
• Banks are saddled with stressed assets which have hampered their earnings

United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) organised a protest march on Friday. 

UFBU are an umbrella organisation consisting of all bank unions and represents about 10 lac employees and officers working in public sector banks, private banks, Regional Rural Banks, co-operative banks and foreign Banks.

Morcha began from Ram Leela Grounds around 10-00 AM and had culminated in the Public Rally around 12-00 noon in Parliament opposite State Bank of India/Police Station.

Here's a list of demands the Union have asked from the government.

• Public Sector Banks should not to be privatised. They deal with huge public savings and hence should be in public sector only.
• Adequate capital should be provided by the Government to these Banks
• Banks should be further expanded to reach all sections of people.
• Banks should not to be consoldiated, amalgamated or merged.
• Effective measures are to be taken to recover the huge bad loans.
• Banking Regulations Act has been amended to resort to Insolvancy and Bankruptcy Code agaisnt big defaulters but this litigation route is time consuming and there is no guarantee of Banks getting back the entire loans. Just in 12 loan accounts, amount due is Rs 2,53,000 crores. Banks will incur further losses on account of these accounts.
• Huge provisions and write off towards bad loans from the profits are resulting in dwindling profits of Banks. For the year ended 31-3-2017, Public Sector Banks earned Operating profit of Rs 150,000 crores but due to provision and write off, net profit was only Rs  574 crores.
• Poor people, students and farmers are being harassed for non-repayment of loans but big corproates are enjoying all concessions, which should stop.
• To compensate these losses in revenue and reduction in profits, Banks are reducing the interest on savings deposits of the common people and also levying higher charges on all types of normal banking services.

 
They also intent to submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi later on Friday (September 15, 2017) to draw his attention to these vital issues and seeking his intervention to ensure remedial measures to save our Banks from the crisis and ensure that Banks help our country and our economic development.

Banks are saddled with stressed assets which has impacted their earnings badly. Banks saw sharp rise of 34.17% in NPAs to Rs 8,29,335 crore as on June 30, 2017, compared to Rs 6,18,109 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Since past two fiscal there has been various measures introduced by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian government to tackle their stressed assets issue among which is consolidation and Insolvency & Bankruptcy code move too.