Letters to BS: Incentivising savings could be a win-win for govt

An increase in the Public Provident Fund limit by Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh for individual households under 80C will lead to additional savings of more than Rs 2 trillion

One tends to endorse the well-timed views of the State Bank of India’s (SBI’s) research report Ecowrap stating that the interest on the Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS) should be given full tax rebate as the revenue foregone by the government could only be Rs 3,092 crore, with minimal impact on the government’s fiscal deficit. Curiously enough, this report has also assessed that there are around 41 million senior citizens’ term deposits accounts (with average deposit per account being Rs 3.3 lakh) accounting for the total deposit of Rs 14 trillion across the country. In fact, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group