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The finance ministry on Thursday exhorted the public sector banks (PSBs) to achieve the targets allocated to them under the various government schemes for financial inclusion and social security in a time-bound manner.
Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary Vivek Joshi chaired a day-long review meeting with heads of PSBs, where progress under various social security (Jan Suraksha) schemes, including Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana, Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana, Stand Up India, and PM SVANidhi were reviewed.
During the meeting, Joshi discussed with banks the three months long saturation campaign of PMJJBY and PMSBY schemes launched on April 1, 2023.
“Banks were advised to leverage their banking correspondents network for outreach and enrolling potential beneficiaries,” the finance ministry said in a statement.
In the meeting, Joshi emphasised that continued support, active role, and participation from all banks will go a long way in ensuring that the saturation campaign reaches the maximum number of eligible beneficiaries and requested banks to conduct awareness campaigns about these schemes in vernacular languages.
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During the meeting, the progress of the Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) scheme was also discussed with special focus on issuance of KCC for animal husbandry and fisheries sectors.
“Scaling up of the account aggregator ecosystem was also reviewed. Issues related to Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) and digital document execution framework were also discussed in the meeting,” the finance ministry said.
The meeting also saw the participation of senior officials from fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying ministry, housing and urban affairs ministry, agriculture and farmers welfare ministry, along with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) chairman and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) CEO.
On Monday, the department urged the states and Union Territories to increase enrolments under the micro-insurance schemes of PMJJBY and PMSBY, considering the scope and size of the population in their respective states.
Earlier, Business Standard had reported that the government was likely to nudge PSBs, which have a good foothold in rural India, to increase the number of beneficiaries under the PMJJBY and PMSBY to 150 million and 350 million respectively.
Currently, active enrolments under PMJJBY and PMSBY stand at 83 million and 239 million, respectively, and claims of about Rs 15,500 crore have been paid under both schemes.
