15th Finance Commission's meeting with Bankers and Financial Institutions

Salient points raised by banks during their meeting with 15th Finance Commission on 9th May 2019.

The Chairman, Shri N.K. Singh, Members and Senior Officials of the 15th Finance Commission met a large group of Bankers and Heads of Financial Institutions in Mumbai today.

Salient points raised by banks during their meeting with 15th Finance Commission on 9th May 2019.

In the context of making the borrowing costs of State Governments aligned to their fiscal and governance fundamentals, the Automatic Debit Mechanism which is currently in vogue and the need for introducing rating of all public sector borrowers including States was discussed by the bankers.

The bankers also mentioned that it is important to take a view on the total public sector borrowing requirements, as opposed to the narrowly defined Union and State fiscal deficits, to improve fiscal transparency and to ensure that markets get clear signals of the fund requirements of the public sector, ex-ante.

A few of the bankers mentioned that the maturity profile of outstanding borrowings of the Union and State Governments indicates that there is likely to be a repayment pressure during the next 4-5 years.

The bankers also discussed their perspective in the areas of priority sector lending, loan waiver announced by Governments and its impact on credit culture, recapitalization of banks, foreign portfolio investment in Government securities, operationalization of sinking fund by States and raising of market borrowing by local self-government.

It was also mentioned, in the context of horizontal devolution of Union taxes among States that fiscal discipline, transparency, governance improvements and revenue raising efforts of States to be factored inappropriately. 

The Bankers and Institutions who attended the meeting were, Mr.P.K. Gupta, State Bank of India, Ms. P. Sengupta, Bank of Baroda, Mr. Dina Bandhu Mohapatra, Bank of India, Mr. A.S. Rajeev, Bank of Maharashtra, Mr. Pallav Mohapatra, Central Bank of India, Mr. Manas Ranjan Biswal, Union Bank of India, Mr. Kaizad Bharucha, HDFC Bank Ltd, Mr. Srinivasan Vaidyanathan, HDFC Bank Ltd, Mr. Sandeep Batra, ICICI Bank Ltd, Mr. Arun Khurana, IndusInd Bank, Mr. K.V.S. Manian, Kotak Mahindra Bank. Mr Ajay Mahajan, IDFC First Bank, Mr Rakesh Sharma, IDBI Bank Limited

(With Inputs from PIB)