Sitharaman made this statement while addressing a lecture at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, adding that giving a lifeline to the PSB's was her primary duty now.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has slammed former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that Public Sector Banks (PSB) went through the 'worst phase' during the UPA regime and the then RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.
Sitharaman made this statement while addressing a lecture at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, adding that giving a lifeline to the PSB's was her primary duty now.
Addressing the issue of loans, Sitharaman once again lashed out ex-PM Manmohan's regime, saying loans were given just based on phone calls from crony politicians.
She added that PSB's did not witness a worst phase than being functional during Manmohan Singh's government and Raghuram Rajan as RBI governor.
Nirmala also responded to questions being asked on Raghuram Rajan's criticism of the Modi government who said that under him (PM Modi) the government is extremely 'centralised' and there is no consistent economic policy.
The Finance Minister said the then Manmohan Singh's government left a nasty stink of corruption for being too democratic, something that will have the approval of quite a lot of liberals. But by being too democratic, it led to a whole lot of corruption which the present government was cleaning today.
Earlier on Monday, Sitharaman said that public sector banks have sufficient liquidity and efforts are being made to ensure that due payments are released to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector by large corporates.
"To ensure liquidity for small businesses, banks have been asked to provide bill discounting facility to the MSME sector against payments due from the large corporates," she said while briefing reporters after meeting heads of state-run banks for measures to boost the economy.
Bill discounting is an arrangement under which a seller recovers an amount of sales bill from financial intermediaries before it is due. Such intermediaries charge a fee for the service.
On the merger of banks, Sitharaman said everything is going smoothly, the bank boards have all been on board, they have taken the necessary steps to keep that process going smoothly.
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