Not ready to privatise public sector banks, says FM Arun Jaitley

India has not reached the point where it can consider selling majority stakes in the public sector banks that control seven tenths of assets in the financial system, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday.

"I don`t think that public or political opinion has converged to the point where we can think of privatisation in the banking sector," Jaitley told the Economist India Summit in New Delhi.

The government is consolidating some of the public sector banks to strengthen them, but does not plan to reduce the state`s share below a threshold of 52 percent, Jaitley said in a podium interview.

TOP PRIORITIES

The top economic policy priorities for the Indian government are to pass a planned Goods and Services Tax, to revive the banking sector and get stalled infrastructure projects moving, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday.

Jaitley told a conference that, as India looks to big state elections next year and a general election in 2019, economic reforms should deliver growth benefits to voters but the government must also "blend" them with social programmes.

"The advantages of reforms are the advantages of growth," Jaitley told the Economist India Summit. 

He also said India`s economy needed to grow faster than the 7.1 percent recorded in the latest quarter. "We are still far below our best," he said in a podium interview.