Two unions of public sector banks across the country, All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), have demanded the merger of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) with their respective sponsor banks to ensure the overall efficiency and viability of the banking sector. In this regard, both the unions have written a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Dualism of control over RRBs must end
According to the news, in the letter, AIBOC and AIBEA have said that it is necessary that to ensure the desired level of operational efficiency, the duality of control over RRBs should end and they should be brought under the same operational and regulatory framework as the sponsor banks. They say that this can be ensured by merging these two entities. RRBs have been asked to upgrade their technology platform to higher edition like the sponsor banks.
The unions have written a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
will benefit from the merger
The work of upgrading technology is currently underway in all 43 RRBs. The All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC) and the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) in a letter to the Finance Minister said that the merger of regional rural banks with their sponsor banks will be a seamless technological transition. It said that the merger of regional rural banks with their sponsor banks will upgrade the skills of the employees of the regional rural banks to modern banking practices and will effectively address the issues of shortage of staff in regional rural banks and sponsor banks.
Regional Rural Banks have around 22,000 branches
There are 43 Regional Rural Banks sponsored by 12 scheduled commercial banks in the country with about 22,000 branches. These have about 30 crore deposit accounts and 3 crore loan accounts covering 702 districts. All public sector banks, except Punjab and Sind Bank, have sponsored one or more RRBs. About 92 per cent of the RRB branches are located in rural and semi-urban areas. The Centre has a 50 per cent stake in RRBs, while the sponsor banks and state governments have 35 per cent and 15 per cent stakes respectively.
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