Shimla: Banks which have been pushing hard to tap into the savings accounts of rural folks in this hill state are up against the good old and friendly post office, which has come to be relied upon for not just safety but better returns than other financial instruments.
For a population of about 70 lakhs in Himachal, postal services director Ambesh Upmanyu says that there are 36,94,547 accounts with post offices in the state. “These accounts hold an accumulated amount of Rs 5430 crores,†he said.
It is because of our reach in rural areas and the trust that people hold in post office deposits that we have been able to get this far, he added.
Of the total accounts we have 11,59,437 saving bank (SB) accounts that hold 690.36 Cr and there are 18,38,294 recurring deposit (RD) accounts which account for Rs 1793 Cr deposits, he said.
A popular monthly income scheme (MIS) has 2,10,370 accounts with deposits of Rs 1837 Cr and term deposits (TD) have 2,81,882 accounts with Rs 676 Cr parked in it. The senior citizen saving scheme (SCSS) has 6148 accounts with Rs 178 Cr deposits, public provident fund (PPF) scheme has 15,710 accounts and Rs 235 deposits, National Saving Certificate (NSC) schemes have 2177 accounts and Rs 44 Cr deposits and an old cumulated term deposit (CTD) scheme has 4063 accounts with Rs 28 Cr deposits.
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This performance is despite the fact that the post offices at the lowest wrung and in the rural outreach are very poorly manned and suffer from infrastructural deficiencies. The post offices are also the focal point for promoting small savings as is evidenced by the number of accounts at about 37 lakh. The central ministry should look into the critical deficiencies at the grass root level and also upgrade services in such branches which have adequate business to justify computerisation, besides adding a person where justified.