Finance Ministry trying to run or ruin the banking sector?

Since the regime of Gotabaya Rajapaksa was set up many good things have happened; one of the main things being the appointment of qualified and capable persons to key positions. But in the process attempts are also being made to bring back some of those who were discredited, dishonest and discarded. No doubt Rajapaksa is unaware of how the public trust and goodwill that he earned the hard way is being misused by the ‘hangers on’ and in the process doing irreparable damage to the country’s banking and financial sector.

One example is the attempt to change the General Manager/CEOs of Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank in a highly unwarranted manner. This position is a very sacred one and always held by a tested banker with very strong and proven operations, credit, PR and HR skills honed over a period. It is only due to that sacred tradition that BC and PB has been able to continue playing sheet anchor roles in the Sri Lankan economy serving both, the private and government sectors, despite all the pressures to carry out banking practices no private bank would have ever dreamt of.

If these two banks are surviving today it is entirely due to the leadership provided by those who held the GM/CEO position over the years to the band of dedicated career bankers who ran them. Only those who have been working at a State Bank at a senior level will know the utterly ridiculous, impractical and ‘unbankable’ proposals that are sent down to the GM/CEO through the Government appointed Chairman who invariably is one whose only banking experience would be to write a cheque and request for a Temporary Overdraft from a bank!

Break this tradition and it will only be a matter of time before the Government has to bail out these banks and not the other way about as it often happens now. 

Not stopping at interfering with BC and PB efforts are also known to be made to bring in a discredited and known finance company defaulter and ex board member to the board of the largest private bank. It is surprising that the Finance Ministry who is making these proposals ignores the terribly bad past records at failed finance companies and tries to appoint the same crooks to the board of a major private bank.  

Unless Rajapaksa firmly deals with those miscreants still in the Finance Ministry now itself, Sri Lanka’s banking sector will also go the way of failed finance companies well before the President ends his first term.

Ex-BoC banker

Moratuwa