FinMin's 3-day conference to boost savings begins tomorrow

Finance Ministry will organise a three-day conference beginning tomorrow to boost savings habit among people and also to create congenial atmosphere for development of savings habit.
The three-day International Cross Regional Conference is being organised on the 90th anniversary to World Thrift (Savings) Day during October 28-90 in collaboration with World Savings Retail Banking Institute of Brussels.
The Conference will be inaugurated by R P Watal, Expenditure Secretary, Ministry of Finance, an official release said.
The Cross Regional Conference will focus on defining youth, their finance and savings needs at different life stages and the role of financial education in motivating youth to save.

It will also focus on how savings bank could improve their offer through the diversification of the delivery challenges.
"This will be an opportunity to get an exposure to the programmes and practices prevalent in the savings banks of other member countries of WSBI."

India has highest rate of young population and 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 35 years. However, there are no products and services which can cater to the specific need of youth population.
The conference will help in drawing strategies and programmes for increasing the outreach of savings schemes to the youth in the country, and underlining the rising force of postal banking in the retail banking marketing with the sharing of the experiences.

To arrest the declining trend in savings rate and to create a congenial atmosphere for development of savings habit among the people, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech had announced revitalisation of small savings scheme.
Also new initiatives have been taken by government such as enhanced limit under Public Provident Fund Scheme, re-launching of Kisan Vikas Patra yojana.
A massive programme has also been launched to bring operation of the savings schemes in Post Offices on CBS platform by Department of Posts.
India's gross and net deposits in National Savings Schemes were at Rs 2.56 lakh crore and Rs 1.36 lakh crore in 2007-08 respectively, up from Rs 108.35 crore and Rs 71.51 crore in 1948-49.

From 2008-09 after showing declining trend on account of heavy maturity, the collections have again picked-up.
In 2013-14, the gross collections were Rs 2.07 lakh crore and net at Rs 15,476.85 crore.