The Hindu Business Line : Govt committed to financial inclusion

Banking for the masses: The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram; the CEO of ACCESS Development Services, Mr Vipin Sharma; and the CMD of Small Industries Development Bank of India, Mr R. M. Malla, at an event in the Capital on Tuesday. –

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Oct. 9 The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Tuesday asserted that the Government would implement the recommendations of the Rangarajan to achieve the goal of financial inclusion among the economically disadvantaged. The final report of the committee is yet to be submitted to the Government.

In his inaugural address at the Microfinance India conference here, Mr Chidambaram also announced the setting up of two separate funds—Financial Inclusion Fund and Financial Inclusion Technology Fund – with a corpus of Rs 500 crore each. The interim report of the Rangarajan Committee had recommended the setting up of these two funds.

“The money for these two funds has already been released,” Mr Chidambaram said on the sidelines of the conference.

The Government had in June 2006 constituted the committee on financial inclusion and asked it to, among other things, suggest measures including institutional changes to be undertaken by the financial sector to implement the proposed strategy of financial inclusion.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister made it clear that the Microfinance Bill, introduced in Parliament, was not a bad one solely because it sought to regulate non -profit microfinance organisations.

“It is a limited Bill and its passing will bring legitimacy to this part of sector (non-profit making microfinance organisations)”, he added.

Mr Chidambaram also indicated that the Government was willing to consider any recommendations on a possible regulatory framework for the ‘for-profit micro finance institutions’.

On Self Help Groups (SHG), the Finance Minister said that the Government wants to take the SHG movement forward and had already instructed banks to promote more SHGs and credit-link them.

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