Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said country need strong banks rather than numerically a larger number. Addressing the media at the end of two day Gyan Sangam programme in Gurgaon, Mr Jaitley said, consolidation in the banking sector was discussed at the meeting and bankers have suggested for setting up an expert group to look into the issue. He said, government will consider this suggestion for bank consolidation.<br/><br/>Mr Jaitley said, in the current global scenario, bankers have to take all the measures to clean up the books by effective recovery. The Minister said, there are enough steps that banks can take to recover bad loans under existing norms and asked banks not to write off bad loans. <br/><br/>Finance Minister said, the other idea which was suggested at the meeting was to reward the public sector bank employees with Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Mr Jaitley said, this proposal is under active consideration of the government.