KOLKATA: The government is mulling capital infusion into regional rural banks to reduce the payout burden of the new pension scheme which threatens to derail these banks lending to small and marginal farmers, two people familiar with the development said.The government has approved a new pension scheme for RRBs following the Supreme Courts order to pay higher pension and bring it at par with the pension scheme in nationalised banks.
The new scheme also covers persons already drawing pension.The Department of Financial Services has directed the National Bank for Agriculture Rural Development (Nabard) to ascertain the size of the capital requirement, one of the persons cited earlier told ET.
Nabard, in turn, has directed every RRB to appoint actuaries for the calculation.Each of these banks will create a pension corpus by transferring fund from their profit and loss account.
This exercise would dampen their profit numbers and may also lead to book losses.
This, in turn, could put strain on their capital as the banks will not be able to plough back profit.The shortfall in their capital risk-adjusted ratio (CRAR) will be made good by the government, people involved in the process of finalising the pension scheme told ET.While the actuarial valuation on the pension corpus will take some time, RRB union members are guessing that the cumulative size could be up to 20,000 crore.
A part of itabout 5,000 crorecan be taken from EPFO.The government will infuse 50% of the capital requirement while public sector banks with their 35% holding in each RRB, and the respective state governments with 15% shareholding, will have to share the burden proportionately.