Purifying, strengthening Cooperative Banking Sector, Sahakar Bharati calls for 'Out of the Box' solution amid PMC Bank crisis
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Mumbai, October 18: Concerned over the Mumbai based PMC Bank scam that left thousands of depositors distressed, the Sahakar Bharati delegation, viewing to purify and strengthen the Cooperative Banking Sector, met the Finance Minister urging to find a solution over the crisis.
Having a deep discourse with the finance head Nirmala Sitharaman, the table also lead by RBI Director, Satish Marathe, Jyotindra Mehta, NAFCUB President and Ramesh Vaidya, President, Sahakar Bharati, reached over a reasonable clarification to associate at least a cooperator with the committee constituted by the FinMin India.
The delegates present there demanded to amend the Banking Regulation Act to provide full regulatory powers to RBI so as to regulate all the Cooperative Banks. "Simply amending Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act will not be enough", the board noted further slating that a vision document and a roadmap for Cooperative Banking Sector was the need of the hour.
"About 130 UCBs, about 1500 Credit Cooperatives and over 15000 Housing Cooperatives besides individual depositors have been affected by the Fraud in PMC Bank", it said further calling for 'Out of the Box' solution. The members also asked for a cell or desk to be created for the Cooperative Financial Institutions in the Central department of banking and finance services.
In the wake of demands further, the Sahakar Bharati slated a fact sheet to present the profile of Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) as on March 2018. "The total number of UCBs being 1551, those registered under the MSCS Act 2002 are 52. Whereas the number of scheduled UCBs is 54", the statement reported.
It freshly added that the total sum of deposits as on March 2018 was Rs 4.57 lakh crore while the loans and advances stood at Rs 2.80 lakh crores. It is in the last week that Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis ahead of the elections had said that he would personally talk to the Finance Minister over the PMC crisis.
In a recently held special meeting in Mumbai, RBI Director Satish Marathe, who is regarded as "The Voice of Cooperative sector in India", pitched for 'sufficient' time must be given to UCBs to make provisions depending upon their profitability over three years. Marathe also raised a demand that a special desk must be created for cooperative financial institutions within the Finance ministry. The Sahakar Bharati has demanded that at least one cooperator should get associated with the committee constituted by the Finance Ministry.
Meanwhile, paving the way of justice to the distressed depositors, the Esplanade Court on Wednesday sent accused Rakesh Wadhawan, Sarang Wadhawan and Waryam Singh to judicial custody till October 23. PMC Bank is facing a crisis after an alleged Rs 4,500 crore scam came to light last month. The RBI has capped withdrawals from the bank at Rs 1,000 and later increased it to Rs 25,000 following protests by depositors. The bank had allegedly lent over 70 per cent of its Rs 9,000 crore in loans to near-bankrupt realty player HDIL.
