Govt will set up 650 branches of the Postal Payments Bank by September 2017, says Ravi Shankar Prasad
New Delhi: The government on
Wednesday cleared a proposal to set up the India Post payments bank with a
corpus of Rs.800 crore and has plans to have 650 branches operational by
September 2017, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
“The Cabinet has cleared proposal of
postal payments bank. We have 1.54 lakh post offices of which 1.39 lakh are
rural post offices. 650 branches of postal payments bank will be established in
the country which will be linked to rural post offices,” Prasad said.
The minister said the payments bank,
which will be run by a chief executive officer, will be professionally managed
and there will be a representation from various other government departments
including the Department of Posts, Department of Expenditure, Department of
Economic Services etc.
“Total architecture of postal
payments bank is of Rs 800 crore which will have Rs 400 crore equity and Rs 400
crore grant. By September
2017, all 650 branches of postal payments bank will become operational.This
we had planned for three years but now we will be doing it in a year,” Prasad
said.
He said that all rural post offices will be given handheld devices by
March 2017. “We are reinforcing it
further. I have had discussion with my officers to give iPad and smartphones to
postmen in urban post offices,” Prasad said. At present, there are 22,137 post
offices with core banking facility compared to State Bank of India’s 1,666
branches.
Source : PTI
