India still not in a position to privatise public sector banks: Arun Jaitley

India has not reached the point where it can consider selling majority stakes in the public sector banks that control seven tenths of assets in the financial system, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday. [caption id=“attachment_2970978” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Finance minister Arun Jaitley[/caption] “I don’t think that public or political opinion has converged to the point where we can think of privatisation in the banking sector,” Jaitley told the Economist India Summit in New Delhi. The government is consolidating some of the public sector banks to strengthen them, but does not plan to reduce the state’s share below a threshold of 52 percent, Jaitley said in a podium interview. The finance minister also said the GST was a major reform in indirect taxation that had been waiting for long and that it would go a long way in stabilising the country’s various levies and bring them down in the long run. “There is a national aspiration in support of GST reform. We have set stiff target to implement it. We are running against time to implement GST.” With inputs from IANS