By IANS,
Chennai : Over 150,000 public sector insurance employees will strike work for a day if the government decides to raise foreign direct investment (FDI) limit to 49 percent from the current 26 percent, an employees’ union said Monday.
All India Insurance Employees’ Association secretary J. Gurumurthy told IANS that the union had already begun approaching parliamentarians of different parties, urging them to advise the government “not to bring the proposed amendment bills”.
Last month, the then finance minister P. Chidambaram said the government would introduce a bill in the next parliament session, beginning Dec 10, to amend the Insurance Act and General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Act (GIBNA) to raise the FDI cap.
“If the country is less affected by the global economic crisis, it is because of our strong public sector banks and insurance sector,” Gurumurthy said.
He asked why the government was rasing the FDI cap in Indian companies at a time when many insurance companies were being nationalised overseas owing to the global meltdown.