Bank officers' union opposes National Monetisation Pipeline

The All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC) on Thursday opposed the National Monetisation Pipeline, terming the move as "wholesale privatisation" of public sector assets across all crucial infrastructure sectors.

The bank officers' union urged the Union government to desist from moving along this "disastrous path of selling family silver".

"This wholesale privatisation of infrastructure assets under the garb of "asset monetisation" is accompanying the disinvestment and strategic sale of entire PSUs across several sectors, including general insurance companies and banks in the public sector, initiated through the Union Budget 2021.

"Such privatisation will only benefit a handful of large corporates while destroying the foundations of our national economy," it said in a statement.

Employees, officers, and other stakeholders of public sector enterprises, which collectively serve as the backbone of the economy, are totally opposed to privatisation of public assets in any form, it added.

The National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), designed by the NITI Aayog, intends to sell off/lease public sector assets worth Rs 6 lakh crore to private companies in four financial years between 2021-22 and 2024-25. Assets worth Rs 88,000 crore has been targeted for such "monetisation" or privatisation in the current financial year.

The NMP was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday.

The shortlisted assets include national highways, trains, railway stations, power generation and transmission, oil and gas pipelines, telecom infrastructure, and mines & minerals.

The union said the government is citing growing fiscal stress and public debt as the justification for such privatisation. But, it added, the reality is that the government's revenue targets have gone haywire due to reckless corporate tax cuts amid the economic slowdown, which has only helped in enhancing corporate profits and creating a stock market bubble.

"The sale of public assets in a situation of demand deficiency in the economy will also lead to under-valuation of assets and corruption, thus institutionalising crony-capitalism," it added.