Post Office Savings Bank may be interconnected with other banks by April

India Post expects to make the Post Office Savings Bank interoperable with other bank accounts by April and will focus on enhancing digitisation of all services in 2021, a senior official of the department said.

The postal department during the lockdown was at the frontline to deliver essential parcels when rail, road and air traffic were grounded and continues to enhance capacity as trains are not fully operational yet, Department of Posts Secretary Pradipta Kumar Bisoi told PTI.

"We will enhance our focus on digitising services and delivery of service at doorstep in the coming year. Our banking and financial services have been digitised already. We expect to make Post Office Savings Bank also directly interoperable with accounts of other banks by April," Bisoi said.

The Post Office Core Banking Solution (CBS) system is the largest in the world with 23,483 post offices already on this network.

India Post serves more than 50 crore Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) customers through 1.56 lakh post offices across the country. It has an outstanding balance of Rs 10.81 crore under POSB schemes.

All POSB accounts can be linked to the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) accounts and can be operated through mobile app DakPay.

"Besides making services digitally accessible to people, we are focussing on doorstep delivery of services. This year we remitted Rs 900 crore money through around 85 lakh transactions and verified 3 lakh pensioners on their doorstep," Bisoi said.

India Post had to suddenly handle responsibility of delivery of essential articles during the lockdown when all the modes of transport were grounded.

The Department of Posts (DoP) started a national level dedicated 'Road Transport Network' on 56 routes touching 80 cities and carried approximately 15,000 bags containing 75 tonnes of parcels daily through the network.

"We now have a parcel handling capacity of 9 crore articles per annum. Average transit time of Speed Post reduced from 105 hours in July 2019 to 81 hours in February 2020," Bisoi said.

During the lockdown, the postal network carried over 10 lakh medical articles across the country, including boxes of medical equipment, ventilators, PPE kits and medicines.

Around 36,000 tonnes of material were delivered through postal channels which also include use of parcel trains.

Not only medicines, India Post also delivered Gangajal to 2.37 lakh homes between April-November 2020.

Bisoi further said the business of India Post was down during the first six month of the current fiscal but it is now getting back to normal.