[op-ed snap] What PMC means

Context

In at least three of the major financial sector scams in the last couple of months in India, featuring Punjab National Bank, IL&FS, Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, apart from poor governance and fraudulent practices, a common thread has been a supervisory failure. 

Supervision

• The country’s leading financial sector regulator, RBI, has been responding only after the event. 
• As in IL&FS, in the PMC case too, there appears to be culpability on the part of the management and the board of the bank. 
• Bank’s loan exposure to a single firm, HDIL, alone constituted 73% of its assets and several dummy accounts were created to camouflage this. 
• The issue of dual control by the RBI and state governments has been cited as a hurdle by the regulator for its inability to effectively supervise cooperative banks.
• Limitations in superseding the board of directors or removing directors of these banks, unlike in commercial banks. 

Cooperative banks & Credit delivery

• The role of co-operative banks in ensuring credit delivery to the unorganised sector and last-mile access, to small businesses, is huge, as the large banks continue to focus on bigger cities and towns. 
• A recent RBI report shows that fund flows to the commercial sector have declined by 88% in the first six months of this current fiscal. That would have hurt small businessmen, traders, and the farm sector.
• Since liberalisation, the resilience of India’s financial sector is seen many times. This may have to do with the dominance of government-owned institutions or lenders and a strong central bank. 

Regulation – RBI

• The central bank has already started building an internal cadre for the supervision of banks and other entities aimed at enhancing its oversight capabilities. 
• This should be complemented by legislative changes which could lead to greater regulatory control and powers for the RBI. 
• An insolvency regime for financial firms is the need of the hour. 
• India needs not just a few large banks and lenders with a national or regional presence but also other players such as cooperative banks, small finance, and payment banks. 
• There is a need for greater accountability on the part of India’s financial regulators.
• Carving out a separate authority for supervision may only lead to regulators working in silos.