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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Extending RTI Act to public sector banks involves systemic risk-MR Umarji

Extending RTI Act to public sector banks involves systemic risk-MR Umarji

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published Published on Jul 25, 2012   modified Modified on Jul 25, 2012
-The Economic Times

The main objective of the Right to Information Act, 2005, is to provide access to information in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority.

The RTI Act defines 'public authority' as anybody or authority constituted by law made by competent legislature and includes anybody owned, controlled or substantially financed directly or indirectly by funds provided by the government.

While deciding the status of any body as public authority, one important criteria is whether the authority is directly or indirectly funded by the central or the state government.

There are many organisations owned and controlled by the central government — engaged in business activities such as commercial airlines, banking, mining, petroleum products, manufacturing plants, equipments, machineries, etc.

For the same, funds are generated by the business itself and funding by the central government is only for capital investment in such organisations and not for carrying out dayto-day businesses. Such business entities are different from public authorities such as municipal corporation and other authorities funded by the government.

Public sector banks established under an Act of Parliament are owned and controlled by the central government, but carry on this business of banking by raising deposits from the public.

They are not dependent on any budgetary allocations for their businesses. Although these banks collect public deposits, they are accountable to the RBI and not to the public for prudent use of such deposits.

Ordinary citizens seeking any information from these public sector banks are incapable of making any assessment on whether the banks are utilising the public deposits prudently and hence the basic objective of the RTI Act to make public authorities accountable to the public for use of public funds is not applicable to public sector banks.

It needs to be appreciated that unlike taxes collected by the government, deposits collected by banks are repayable on demand and that being so, the business of lending and investment undertaken by banks is always conducted with paramount consideration to protecting the interest of depositors.

Since the objective of accountability to public is not relevant as far as the banking business is concerned, there is no justification to extending the RTI Act to public sector banks.

Another danger in making public sector banks subject to the RTI Act is that a private citizen collecting information may misinterpret or may not correctly assess whether the bank is using public deposits prudently.

Any misinterpretation of information obtained and adverse publicity of such misinterpretation can trigger a run on the bank and cause irreparable damage to the public interest rather than serve the objective of making such banks accountable to the public.

Extending the applicability of the RTI Act to financial sector regulators and public sector banks and financial institutions, therefore, involves systemic risk.

As far as the objective of transparency is concerned, all public sector business entities, including banks, publish their balance sheets and comply with regulatory directives with regard to corporate governance. Such business entities are beyond doubt much more transparent than other public authorities who are funded by the government using tax-payers' money.

Compliance with the objective of transparency is also not a valid reason for extending the RTI Act to public sector banks. Another impact of extending the RTI Act to public sector banks is on the bankers' obligation to secrecy with regard to affairs of its customers.

Section 8 of the RTI Act contains a list of ten categories of information exempt from disclosure, but information relating to financial affairs of any person is not included and there is no reference to the bankers' obligation to secrecy in relation to affairs of their customers.

If the information sought from the bank relates to financial transactions of any customer, the bank rejects such requests on the ground that information is personal, disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity.

In the absence of any specific exceptions on bankers' obligation to secrecy and on account of ambiguities in the law, the authorities under the RTI Act have passed orders directing that minutes of board meets, inspection report of the RBI with respect to a co-operative bank, defaulters list, etc., should be furnished to the applicants.

Same information with respect to private sector banks is covered by obligation to secrecy and is not accessible to any citizen. This distortion in the law is on account of the government undertaking business of commercial banking, which leads to public sector banks becoming public authorities and hence subject to the RTI Act.

Furnishing information such as inspection reports of banks or board minutes of regulatory authorities or banks is fraught with serious systemic risks. If instead of the regulator, the public or the media make assessment of the financial health of our banks and financial institutions, the regulator may be helpless in either preventing or controlling the damage.

Prudent policy considerations, therefore, demand that all regulators in the financial market (RBI, Sebi, Irda, PFRDA) and all the public sector banks and other public sector entities operating in the financial market are exempted from the applicability of the RTI Act.

The Economic Times, 25 July, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/guest-writer/extending-rti-act-to-public-sector-banks-involves-systemic-risk/articleshow/15131880.cms


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