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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Funding crisis hits efforts to make banking services easy for Nrega beneficiaries by Devika Banerji

Funding crisis hits efforts to make banking services easy for Nrega beneficiaries by Devika Banerji

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published Published on Feb 20, 2011   modified Modified on Feb 20, 2011
A funding crisis has hit the government's efforts to leverage the banking correspondent model to provide banking services to the beneficiaries of its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme.

Work has stopped in Orissa, the first state to adopt the model in all districts, after State Bank of India (SBI) refused to bear the cost of this financial inclusion drive for the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

The banking correspondent model seeks to increase banking penetration in rural areas by using agents to deliver services on a commission basis. The government had begun exploring the possibility of using bank correspondents to make payments to MGNREGA beneficiaries in early 2009.

The system was based on biometric identification. While the concept is being tried in some districts of Rajasthan, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, Orissa was the first state to opt for an across the board coverage.

Orissa had signed an agreement with SBI in 2009 to set up the model in the state's unbanked areas. But the agreement fell apart after the Ministry of Rural Development asked the lender to bear the cost of the model. "Issues related to who should fund the project have not been cleared yet," said a Ministry of Rural Development official.

SBI had roped in a Mumbai-based technological services company, A Little World, to set up banking outposts in Orissa that would have connected the state's villages with SBI. The plan was to have at least one outpost for every panchayat. These outposts would then have recruited and trained bank correspondents to deliver the wages in cash to MGNREGA workers using biometric devices.

The cost of a single biometric device is around 10,000.

"The government should financially assist us to take the project forward," said Anurag Gupta, Founder and Director of A little World. "The cost is not much and the government should take steps to utilise the facilities which we have put in place."

The company has already set up 1,200 banking outposts in three districts of Orissa. Running the entire network would have cost 60 lakh per month.

"Currently very little share of the disbursement is happening through us, most of it is still going through the old channel," Gupta added.

The old channel, in this case, means bank branches and post offices. But lack of bank or post office branches makes it difficult for workers to personally claim their money, forcing them to rely on middlemen who charge a fee for the service. It also makes the scheme prone to leakage.

Ironically, there is no scarcity of funds for the scheme. Until December, the ministry had utilised a little over 50% of the 40,100 crore allotted for the scheme for fiscal 2010-11.

Also, 6% of the allocation given to states is reserved for administrative and infrastructure building functions, which includes setting up banking correspondent and technology-based projects. None of the states have utilised more than 35% of these funds.

The Economic Times, 21 February, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/funding-crisis-hits-efforts-to-make-banking-services-easy-for-nrega-beneficiaries/articleshow/7536640.cm


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