15/04/2016
The
Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is likely to undertake a review of India
Post on April 14 regarding action taken by the department for setting up
its payments bank.
According to sources, PMO
will also take stock of progress made by Department of Post (DoP) to
improve functioning through initiatives like e-commerce and IT
modernisastion.
The Public Investment Board
(PIB) has already approved the Rs 800-crore proposal from India Post for
setting up a payments bank and after the PMO review, it will be sent to
the Cabinet for final approval. "Top officials of DoP will brief PMO
about the progress made so far by the department in improving efficiency
and what is the latest update regarding the payments bank," a source
said. The meeting with PMO is likely to take place on April 14, the
source added.
The PMO is monitoring the
progress made by DoP to improve its functioning and utilising the vast
network of post offices across the country for financial inclusion.
Earlier
this year also, PMO had taken a review of DoP with special focus on the
implementation of proposals submitted by a task force on leveraging the
department's post office network. India Post has selected Deloitte to
advise it on setting up a payments bank.
The
India Post payments bank will primarily target unbanked and under-banked
customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas, with a focus on
providing simple deposit products and money remittance services.
The pilot for the payments bank is set to start from January 2017 and the full-fledged operations may start by March.
As
many as 40 international financial conglomerates including World Bank
and Barclays have shown interest to partner the postal department for
setting up the bank.