Confused State Bank of India (SBI) has marginally reduced bank-charges and Minimum-Balance-Requirement after these were hiked abnormally that too just after demonetisation when Prime Minister was stressing for cash-transactions to be replaced by banking-system. Department of Financial Services-DFS (Government of India) should pull decision-takers at SBI who took a wrong decision to hike these in contradiction to system-requirements after demonetisation.
DFS should now take steps that banking-charges and Minimum-Balance-Requirements for all public-sector banks should be uniformed and decided by DFS itself with adequate publicity. Banks suddenly change Minimum-Balance-Requirements causing unnecessary loss because of levied bank-charges for not having required balance for no fault of account-holders.
Rather it is time that respective interest-rates for loans and deposits should also be same for all public-sector banks. There was a time that all nationalised banks used to have same interest-rates for deposits. But in free economy, bank-customers are utterly confused finding even public-sector banks having different interest-rates for fixed-deposits. It hurts retired and senior citizens who switch over from one bank to other for want of higher interest as their only livelihood. Banks can compete by giving better service and facilities.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
