NABARD Regional Office Jharkhand, India Post and India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) entered into an MOU on Monday to promote Financial Inclusion and Digital Literacy in Jharkhand and provide access to banking services to the unbanked and under banked sections of the society with the support of NABARD under Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF).
The MoU was signed in the presence of AK Padhi Chief General Manager, NABARD, S S Kujur, Chief Post Master General, Jharkhand Circle, Annie Alexander, GM, NABARD, Satyakam, Director of Postal Services, Jharkhand Circle and Gursharan Rai Bansal, Chief General Manager & CSMO, IPPB, S R Panda DGM NABARD, and Apurv Gupta Circle Head IPPB.
During the occasion, Padhi said that NABARD an apex organization for agriculture and rural development provides grant assistance to Banks for generating demand for banking services such as Awareness Creation, Digital Financial Education, Financial Literacy Infrastructure, Building Base for Digital Banking viz. CBS, Interface for Technologies, Payment/Acceptance Infrastructure, etc.
During the current year, NABARD aims to provide support of Rs. 8.31 crore under various schemes to different Banks for FI initiatives in 22 Special Focus Districts and 2 Other Districts in the state of Jharkhand. Kujur, while releasing a special Postal Cover to commemorate the occasion opined that IPPB alongwith India Posts aims to conduct 408 financial and digital literacy awareness camps and deployment of 700 technologically driven transaction devices (POS/mPOS) at BOs through Dak Sewaks through grant support of NABARD.
Special projects like creation of digital transaction facility at weekly Haats, Mandis and villages may be undertaken by IPPB and supported by NABARD with eligible support under the FIF.