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Our Bureau

`RBI proposals only draft guidelines'

New Delhi , July 28

The Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Friday sought to assuage the concerns of the aggrieved bank employees over the `outsourcing' issue, stating that public sector banks would undertake outsourcing only under a well-defined policy of the respective Boards.

Responding to a calling attention notice in the Lok Sabha on the outsourcing issue, Mr Chidambaram said that the Reserve Bank of India was exercising utmost care and caution to ensure that any possible risks of outsourcing were addressed while proposing to allow banks to outsource certain non-core activities. The Left parties staged a walkout in protest against outsourcing of "vital banking activities" like clearing operations.

Draft Guidelines

Mr Chidambaram emphasised that the RBI proposals were a set of draft guidelines to regulate outsourcing of some non-core activities of banks and were meant to elicit feedback from banks and other agencies. These are not final guidelines, he said.

On clearing operations, the Finance Minister said that the proposal that is being examined was to consolidate all the clearing-houses under an umbrella organisation (a `not for profit' company).

About half a million public sector bank employees went on a daylong strike on Friday in protest against the proposal to allow outsourcing of banking activities. The RBI employees and officers, who took out a morcha to Parliament , however, did not accept the Finance Minister's viewpoint on the issue of clearing activities.

"Our worry is about privatisation of clearing activities and not outsourcing. Why should this job be taken out of RBI and placed under the control of a private company when there is nothing to complain about our performance?" Mr Samir Ghosh, Geneal Secretary, All India Reserve Bank Employees Association, said.

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