Comments
Bank accounts for all can be achieved in two years if banks can ride on the Aadhaar enrolment drive that is currently underway, according to Nachiket Mor, Chairman of the RBI-appointed financial inclusion committee.
The Mor committee, which submitted its report on January 7, proposed that banks should provide every individual over 18 years a bank account by January 2016. In India, only 36 per cent adults have bank accounts.
However, many bankers and analysts think that it is too ambitious a target to achieve in two years.
At a press conference at the RBI on Friday, Mor said banks will have to ride on the Aadhaar enrolment drive that is due to be completed by December 2015. As on date, over 50 crore people have been issued biometric-verifiable Aadhaar cards.
He said that since Aadhaar is already verifying the identity and address of individuals during enrolment, banks need not duplicate the process. “As soon as Aadhaar card is issued, only an instruction has to be issued to a willing bank to go ahead and open an account,” Mor said while addressing media persons on the report by the Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Business and Low Income Households.
Priority Target Responding to reports in certain sections of the media that the committee has proposed to raise the priority sector lending (PSL) target to 50 per cent from the current 40 per cent, Mor said, “We are not saying, increase PSL from 40 per cent to 50 per cent.”
The committee has only recommended giving different weightage to different types of priority sector loans.
For example, loans given by banks directly to a farmer in a remote location in the country will get more weightage than to a small enterprise in a metro.
“We are saying that if you do one rupee of lending to direct agriculture or a weaker section, then it will be treated as 1.25,” Mor said.
The idea of such a proposal, he said, was to allow banks to specialise in a particular area of lending based on the bank’s strength and also to encourage them to lend in areas that are severely under-banked.
> satyanarayan.iyer@thehindu.co.in
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.