shwetank's-pad

A recent post in this forum was posted saying “MODI’s Achhe din : Selfie with Abott, Coal Mine for Adani” !!  It further claims ” Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have charmed his new Australian friend, Prime Minister Tony Abbott into clicking selfies, but that doesn’t mean he has forgotten his old friends. State Bank of India extended a $1 billion (Rs 6,000 crore) loan to Adani mining for its Carmichael mine project in Queensland (Australia).

Rebuttal:

There are 2 charges in this post.

1. Modi manages to get his friend Adani mining contract using his influence on P M Abott. This is a charge or a praise? Any way this charge is either idiotic or anti-nationalistic or to sum up we can call it very AAPtardic !! Laugh, ignore or ridicule. They won’t get it.

2. The second charge claims SBI-ADANI & Narendra Modi’s putative involvement in crony capitalism. This is serious and must be rebutted. It ain’t that simple.

In 2007, when foreign banks backed out due to the sub-prime crisis in US, SBI lent Tata (its SPV in UK) *$1 billion* to help acquire Corus. The then SBI Chairman boasted: “No bank in the world can do this kind of funding in 5-10 minutes. We have been doing that” In 2010, to refinance Tata’s loans taken in 07, consortium led by SBI & Standard Chartered gave 3.53 billion GBP (25K crore). Link: Indian Express

There is nothing wrong in lending huge amounts to big businesses. But I get amused at usual suspects going apoplectic when a PSB deals with Adani Group. The present matter which is discussed in media is solely because media is in hand in gloves with AAP and they are willing to promote their tantrums without having any clue about the matter. This is just an MoU between SBI and Adani Group agreeing to provide a credit facility of up to 1 billion, *subject* to a detailed assessment of mining project. Link: Adani Group Website

To say SBI has “already lent Adani Rs 6K crore through straight cash transfer” is completely inaccurate. SBI has yet to complete its assessment of project. While Adani group has issued a press release, problem is that SBI isn’t equally quick in releasing info. That creates needless issues. Concluding (cronyism etc) without SBI even completing assessment and without fine print (of nature of credit facility, amount and disbursement schedule) is silly.

Do watch this NDTV debate on the subject matter. Political spokies shouldn’t have been on the panel, but do watch:

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/left-right-centre/sbi-loan-to-adani-fair-or-favoritism/345436 …

Really poor show by BJP spokie for not mentioning that SBI loaned $800 million to Adani Group under UPA regime. He could’ve killed the whole one-sided debate right there had he mentioned the 2012 SBI loan. There is a *second* loan that SBI gave to Adani Group under UPA (in addition to the $800 mill in 2012). A massive loan of € 632.9 mill in 2010. According to this, under UPA, SBI gave 2 loans totaling $1.6 billion to Adani Group companies. Link: Banktrack.org

And this is why I feel a party like AAP can never take India forward. They’ll never ever go to the root of the problem which is “Nationalization of Banks”.

Public Sector Banks have NPAs of 350,000 crores and yet they carry on undeterred. SBI is the new Air India, a hunchbacked Maharaja? On the midnight of July 19, 1969, two events happened. Man landed on the moon and Indira Gandhi nationalized our banks. One man opposed Mrs Gandhi was Rustom Cooper of Swatantra Party. He fought alone, bravely. He lost. We lost. 1969: Mrs Gandhi nationalised banks. 1970: Supreme Court overruled Mrs Gandhi. 1971: Mrs Gandhi overruled Supreme Court 1971-present: Loot. In 1976, Minister P C Sethi called TR Tuli, MD of Punjab National Bank and asked him to hand over a Rs 10 lakh loan. Link:

I have written to P.M. on MyGov portal. Please don’t follow on the footsteps of Indira Gandhi. Privatize all public sector banks. At once !!