Ministry, RBI meet on financial inclusion today

Officials from the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will meet tomorrow in Mumbai to finalise new technological models for spreading banking activities in unbanked areas.

“Tomorrow, we are going to sit with RBI to finalise what are going to be the various technologies which we will be using, what are the business processes under the regulation available,” Financial Services Secretary R Gopalan said at the Skoch summit here.

Gopalan said the government had identified 60,000 areas with population of more than 2,000 having no banking facilities.

“We are looking at a slew of channels which can be used for the purpose,” he said.

In his Budget speech, the finance minister had said that despite the expansion of banking network in the country, there were still some areas that remained under-banked or unbanked.

“A sub-committee of the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) will identify such areas and formulate an action plan for providing banking facilities to all these areas in the next three years,” he had said.

He set aside Rs 100 crore for 2010-11 as one-time grant-in-aid to ensure provision of at least one centre or point of sales for banking services in each of the unbanked blocks in the country.

To increase the access of banking facilities, banks have in place “No-frills account” system, which do not require any balance or very less minimum balance.

“So far, these banks have opened 3.3 crore such accounts,” Mukherjee had said.

To further increase the banking facilities, RBI has also allowed banks to set up standalone automated teller machines without prior approval.