Moneycontrol Bureau
As of yesterday over 10.3 crore accounts have been opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, said Hasmukh Adhia, Secretary, Financial Services.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18’s Sajeet Manghat, on the sidelines of two-day financial sector retreat Gyan Sangam at Pune, Adhia said the new focus for Jan Dhan Yojana is to expand coverage of households. The scheme has seen deposits worth over Rs 7,500 crore, he said, adding that about 80 percent of accounts have been issued RuPay cards.
Adhia said the government intends to popularise the scheme further by putting in advertisement in newspapers and other media. “Through newspapers and Gram Sabha medium, we will urge people to open accounts,” he said.
Later in the day, while addressing the media, Adhia stated that the entire idea of organising the retreat emerges out of the need for banking sector reforms. “The purpose of retreat is to find the answers collectively as to how, where and when the reforms are put in place to make the banking system robust. This retreat is a format for complete stakeholder consultation. This informal format will break the silos in which different stakeholders like government, practitioners and regulators normally function,” he said.
He emphasized that the retreat is an exercise to learn from “each other and help each other in solving problems”. And this would involve the highest level sensitisation of issues among all the government officers, banks, financial institutions, regulators including IRDA, PFRDA and RBI.
The two-day “Retreat for Banks and Financial Institutions” called “Gyan Sangam” was inaugurated by Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance at National Institute of Banking Management (NIBM), Pune. Participants included Hasmukh Adhia, regulators, officers of Ministry of Finance, top management of all public sector banks (PSBs), insurance companies and financial institutions (FIs), NIBM and CAFRAL.
Today’s meet will include Sinha and four deputy governors of RBI. “The public sector banks have been asked to be frank in their views on reforms and everyone should come up with fruitful actionable points,” said Adhia.
Before the group discussions, McKinsey made the presentation on international best practices in banking. The research agency has suggested groups to focus on the outcomes related to access, efficiency, stability, profitability/value creation and growth. The groups comprising PSB representatives are in the process of discussions and have been asked to give reform roadmap by morning. The final reports would be presented before Finance Minister Arun Jaitely on January 3, 2015. These reports would then be compressed into three presentations which would be made by CMDs before Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Also Read: Need to rethink strategy for PSU banks: Banking Secretary
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