The government of India launches several schemes each year, but often they fail to reach their intended beneficiaries. Recognizing this issue, the Finance Ministry says to Public Sector Banks to achieve targets under Financial Inclusion Plans promptly.
Vivek Joshi who is the secretary of the Department of Financial Services chaired a day-long review meeting with the head of the PSBs.
In this meeting, the progress under social security schemes such as Stand Up India, PM SVANidhi, Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana, and others was reviewed.
On 1st April 2023, the 3-month-long saturation campaign of PMJJBY and PMSBY began which was also discussed in the meeting. The Finance Ministry’s statement said Banks were advised to leverage their banking correspondents network for outreach and enrolling potential beneficiaries.
Dr. Vivek Joshi, Secretary, DFS, holds a review meeting with heads of PSBs and other organisations to review the progress of schemes under its ambit.
Read here: https://t.co/0Qr6N5HfPd pic.twitter.com/5boROCsSOM— DFS (@DFS_India) April 13, 2023
The Finance Ministry says to Public Sector Banks to achieve targets under Financial Inclusion Plans and in the same meeting Joshi also emphasized how an active role, continued support, and participation of all banks and how this would help the saturation campaign reach the maximum number of eligible people.
He requested the banks to spread awareness about these schemes in vernacular languages. The progress of the Kisan Credit Cards scheme was also discussed at the meeting. The focus was on issuing KCC for the animal husbandry and fisheries sector.
The Finance Ministry added, “Scaling up of the account aggregator ecosystem was also reviewed. Issues related to Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) and digital document execution framework were also discussed in the meeting.”
In the meeting, senior officials from animal husbandry and dairying ministries, fisheries, housing, and urban affairs ministry, agriculture and farmers welfare ministry, along with NABARD chairman NPCI CEO were also present.
Just this Monday the department had urged not just states but also Union Territories to increase enrollment under micro-insurance schemes of PMJJBY and PMSBY.
Business Standard had earlier reported that PSBs would be nudged by the government as they have a good foothold in rural India. The hope was to increase the number of beneficiaries under the PMJJBY and PMSBY schemes to 150 million people and 350 million people respectively.
To put things into perspective the current active enrolments under either scheme stand at 83 million and 239 million respectively. Claims of 15,500 crores have been paid under both schemes.
Source: DFS
