Financial Inclusion an Important Priority Of Government; Objective is to Extend Financial Services to Large Hitherto Un-Served Population of The Country to Unlock its Potential Growth

Financial Inclusion is an important priority of the government. The objective of Financial Inclusion is to extend financial services to the large hitherto un-served population of the country to unlock its growth potential. To extend the outreach of banking to those outside the formal banking system, Government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are taking various initiatives from time to time.

To boost the financial inclusion across the country, Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was launched on 28.08.2014 which envisages universal access to banking facilities with at least one basic banking account for every household, financial literacy, access to credit insurance and pension. The beneficiaries would get a RuPay Debit Card having inbuilt accident cover of ₹ 1.00 lakh. In addition, there is a life insurance cover of ₹ 30000/- to those people who opened their bank accounts for the first time between 15.08.2014 to 26.01.2015 and meet other eligibility conditions of the Yojana.

Under PMJDY as on 29.04.2015, 15.30 crore accounts have been opened out of which 9.17 crore accounts are in rural areas and 6.13 crore in urban areas. Deposits of ₹ 16192.39 crore have been mobilized. 13.71 crore RuPay Debit cards have been issued.

This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.