Bank SBI closure catches workers by surprise
Staff Writer | Friday April 23, 2021 22:06
Mmegi has established that the bank staff learnt about the developments a few days ago. The bank, established in Botswana in 2013, recently notified the Bank of Botswana that it would surrender its banking licence with effect from 30 June 2021.
A decision was reportedly reached to transfer clients’ accounts to Bank of Baroda.
This week, highly placed sources among the workers said the closure had come as a shock to them. The sources said also the benefits they were due to get were meagre.
'There was no consultation as we only learnt about the bank closure about two weeks ago and even some of the clients are not happy about being transferred to another bank. We are also shocked that we will only get a month salary,' said a reliable source.
Efforts to reach the bank management were not successful as the phone number available rang unanswered.
According to the CIPA website, the Bank which was registered in 2006, has the State Bank of India as the majority shareholder. State Bank of India is India’s largest government-owned bank.
Bank SBI opened amidst much pomp and fanfare in May 2013, with the aim of carving out a niche within the country’s competitive banking sector.
While no reasons were publicly given for the bank’s closure, workers have said the issue was poor performance of SBI in the local market. According to its last financials, Bank SBI Botswana had a loan book of P212 million and pretax profits of P1.5 million for the year ended March 2020, figures representing the lower end of the local market.