State-owned Punjab National Bank on Tuesday said it has raised Rs1,000 crore through bonds to fund business growth and meet global capital adequacy norms. "The bank has raised Rs1,000 crore long term bonds at an annual coupon of 8.23 per cent on Private Placement basis on Monday," PNB said in a statement. Besides, the Government has decided to provide Rs870 crore to the bank as part of capital infusion plan. Public sector banks require equity capital of Rs2.4 lakh crore by 2018 to meet the global, Basel III, norms on capital adequacy. For the current fiscal, the Government has allocated Rs11,200 crore for bank capitalisation.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget speech had said that "to be in line with Basel-III norms there is a requirement to infuse Rs2,40,000 crore as equity by 2018 in our banks. To meet this huge capital requirement we need to raise additional resources to fulfil this obligation". While preserving the public ownership, the capital of these banks will be raised by increasing the shareholding of the people in a phased manner through the sale of shares largely through retail to common citizens of this country, the minister had said.