Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will hold a meeting with chief executives of public sector banks and financial institutions on July 31 to discuss the government’s financial inclusion plan, among other things.
The plan — Sampoorna Vittiya Samaveshan Mission — will be launched on August 15, as announced by the FM in the Union Budget, and will look to open bank accounts in uncovered households, as also provide the unbanked population with other services such as insurance.
Under the mission, the government will look to open not just 15 crore new bank accounts but will also issue debit cards powered by RuPay, India’s indigenous payments system developed on lines of MasterCard and Visa. Among the other things on the cards will be an accidental insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh and an overdraft facility of Rs 5,000 crore for account holders who agree to undergo a financial literacy course.
As per Census 2011, 58 percent of the country’s population does not have access to financial services. CNBC-TV18 also learns that the government will look to link the creation of new bank accounts to Aadhaar, which has covered about about 70 crore of the country’s 120 crore population, in order to avoid duplication of accounts in a single household.
