City to have Post Bank of India soon

Rachna Khaira

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 14

Residents of the city will soon be able to open an account in the proposed ‘Post Bank of India’ that would have its branches at all the post offices in the district.

A committee headed by TSR Subramanian has recently submitted a report to Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union IT and Telecom Minister and has recommended to set up the proposed bank to strengthen up the services of the strong network of 1.5 lakh post offices established across the country.

“The establishing of the bank will leverage the post office network and we would be able to roll out banking, insurance and e-commerce services through our 334 post office networks across Jalandhar division. Also, in addition, this would lead to the creation of hundreds of direct jobs within the district itself,” said KP Meena, Head Post master, Jalandhar Division.

Meena informed that out of the strong post office network in the state, Jalandhar division was expected to do maximum business as the area compromises the NRI belt.

The proposed bank would complement the already-running PM’s Jan Dhan Yojana. According to the report, the post offices across the country have around six lakh crores in deposits, the highest in India after the country’s largest bank, the State bank of India (SBI).

The report has also recommended setting up a holding committee under the Department of Posts for immediate rolling out of the banking, insurance and e-commerce services through 1,55,000 post offices of the country.

The department’s revenue increased about 43 per cent between 2007-08 and 2011-12 but its expenditure rose 96 per cent during the period, resulting in a net deficit of about four times, the report said.

Although there are courier services in Tier-I and -II cities and, at the most, Tier-III ones, there is hardly any service available in Tier-IV and more remote towns. Post offices can play a big role in bridging this gap.

The major reason for the poor financial health of the department is the losses incurred due to the subsidy driven sales of the post cards, inland letters and speed posts. However, the committee has recommended that India Posts should continue to offer these services at relatively low costs as it is the obligation of the government to give affordable communication tools to the public.

Recommendation

committee headed by TSR Subramanian has recently submitted a report to Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union IT and Telecom Minister and has recommended to set up the proposed bank to strengthen up the services of the strong network of 1.5 lakh post offices established across the country.