India Post, the Indian department of
posts, which has been offering services like savings accounts, postal life
insurance, pension payments and money transfer, will soon have its own
full-fledged bank.
The Post Bank of India (PBI), as it
is likely to be called, will start operations once the department obtains
approval from the Cabinet and banking licence from the Reserve Bank of India.
According to Kamleshwar Prasad,
member of Postal Services Board, Delhi, who was in Gujarat to attend an
official function, a feasibility study for setting up the PBI has already been
carried out and the proposal is now in an advanced stage. He said though the
department had enough manpower to handle the new tasks, the staff strength was
being increased further to successfully deliver services of government social
welfare schemes “in the most efficient and reliable way at the lowest cost due
to its reach.” The postal department has 500,000 employees attached to 155,000
post-offices, much more than India’s largest bank, the State Bank of India
(SBI), which has 12,500 branches. Even the number of branches of all scheduled
commercial banks put together totals only 75,000. There are 9,500 post-offices
in Gujarat alone.
The PBI will provide banking
services, including accepting of deposits from the public for lending or
investment. In addition to deposit schemes, the PBI will also provide loans to
general public and corporates like any regular bank.
PBI will become an additional source
of revenue generation for the department, besides creating a platform for
financial inclusion programme of the government.
Currently, the department operates
seven small savings schemes through a network of post offices and collects huge
amounts for both state and federal governments from 250 million
account-holders, with outstanding balance of some Rs6,000 billion.
Also, with the postal department on
an info-tech modernisation drive, it will embark on a pilot project to network
all post-offices in Tamil Nadu for later setting up about one hundred ATMs in
post-offices.
Source : http://www.khaleejtimes.com
Thanks
NFPE GPO
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