Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera today said that recent news reports stating that the People’s Bank is to be privatized are "completely false and misleading". Certain political parties and the Trade Union affiliated to those parties had alleged the government is to privatize the people’s Bank citing financial difficulties to infuse capital quoting an opposition Parliamentarian. However Samaraweera said that there is no truth to these allegations and that the government categorically dismisses this claim of privatization as having been made with ulterior motives. "It is understood that this baseless allegation is made following the proposal made by the ministry of Finance to amend the People’s Bank Act No 29 of 1961 enabling the Bank to increase the authorized capital and the debentures to strengthen the financial stability and effectiveness of its operations. Once this amendment is passed in Parliament the employees and depositors can get these securities and there is no intention to issue equity securities to outsiders," he said in a statement. The Budget 2019 speech had proposed development of capital markets beyond bank financing. "Therefore, I wish to emphasize that the attempts on the part of political parties to portray that the government is trying to privatize the People’s Bank is a malicious attempt to hide their political bankruptcy. There is no attempt on the part of the government or the Ministry of Finance to privatize the People’s Bank as stated in the media statements," the statement added.