New appointments to private banks to end cronyism: Harsha
31 March 2015 06:16 am
The new government will be appointing its own directors to commercial banks to end the cronyism practiced by the previous regime, according to the Policy Planning and Economic Affairs Deputy Minister.
The United National Party, when in the opposition, had severely criticized the past regime for appointing their supporters to privately run commercial banks as directors to gain
board control.
Mirror Business inquired from Policy Planning and Economic Affairs Deputy Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva as to why the new regime is also following the same channels
of appointment.
“What else can we do? We will clean the house of corruption,” he stressed.
Last week, Hatton National Bank (HNB) Chairperson Dr. Ranee Jayamaha and National Development Bank PLC (NDB) Chairman Sunil Wijesinha announced their resignations, with Wijesinha saying that the Finance Minister had expressed his wish to restructure the NDB board.
However, Dr. de Silva said that the state will not pressure any board member to resign but only forward candidates to the shareholders.
Meanwhile, he said that the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF), one of the tools through which the state maintains power over the banks, would be moved out of the Central Bank—the banking sector regulator— and made independent, since it represents a conflict of interest.
“That is incestuous. What they have done is incest,” Dr. de Silva said.
(CW)