Finance Minister P Chidambaram today met heads of central public sector enterprises and is believed to have impressed upon them to park surplus funds with public sector banks as per the government directive issued early this year.
Among others, the meeting has been attended by GAIL Chairman U D Choubey, SAIL Chairman S K Roongta, BSNL chief Kuldeep Goyal and senior officials of the petroleum, power and finance ministries.
The meeting comes amid complaints by PSU banks that CPSEs are not following the finance ministry guideline issued in January asking the public sector undertakings to park at least 60 per cent of their surplus funds with the PSBs.
While going for the meeting with the Finance Minister, Choubey said, "parking of funds is the agenda," but he did not elaborate on it.
In August, Chidambaram had said, "CPSEs are continuing to call for competitive bids... nor are they observing the guidelines that 60 per cent of the public sector companies' monies should be kept with the public sector banks".
To earn higher interest rates, CPSEs with surplus cash call for bids from banks for depositing funds. As a result, PSU banks lose out deposits to private sector banks, which bid aggressively by offering higher rate for CPSE funds.
Chairman and Managing Director of Punjab National Bank (PNB) K C Chakrabarty today said CPSEs must park their surplus funds with the public sector banks as per the guidelines.
"If public sector banks are accountable to meet the objective of the government, the PSUs must give them first preference... even private sector banks must give first priority to public sector banks," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Micro-finance Summit.