new delhi privatisation of any public sector bank psb during the current fiscal is very unlikely due to their low valuations and mounting stressed assets amid the covid19 crisis sources saidat present four public sector banks are under the rbis prompt corrective action pca framework which puts several restrictions on them including on lending management compensation and directors feesso it does not make any business sense to sell these lenders indian overseas bank iob central bank of india uco bank and united bank of india as there will not be any suitors for them from the private banking space the sources saidthe government will refrain from distress sale of its entities especially if they are in strategic sectors they addedforget outright sale hardly any public sector bank has gone for stake dilution in the last many years as valuations have been very depressed sources said adding the government stake in some psbs has gone past 75 per cent due to successive capital infusions for meeting mandatory regulatory ratiosthe covid19 pandemic has not only halted the process of recovery of psbs but it is going to have an adverse impact on financial health of private sector banks too they saidsanguine about better financial health of the psbs finance minister nirmala sitharaman had not announced any capital infusion for them in budget 202021 in february this yearthe government however is following the process of consolidation of psbs for the past few yearsit started with the merger of state bank of saurashtra with its parent state bank of india sbi in 2008 subsequently state bank of indore was merged with sbi in 2010after an over sixyear hiatus sbi again amalgamated its remaining five subsidiaries state bank of patiala state bank of bikaner and jaipur state bank of mysore state bank of travancore state bank of hyderabad along with bhartiya mahila bank bmb effective april 2017in the first threeway amalgamation vijaya bank and dena bank were merged with bank of baroda from april 1 2019 to create the thirdlargest lender of the countrya mega consolidation exercise took shape beginning april this year as per the consolidation plan oriental bank of commerce and united bank of india were merged into punjab national bank syndicate bank into canara bank andhra bank and corporation bank into union bank of india and allahabad bank into indian bankfollowing the consolidation there are now seven large public sector banks and five smaller ones there were as many as 27 psbs in 2017