MUMBAI, JUNE 25, 2010: The RBI has mandated all nationalized banks to help rope into its ‘Financial Inclusion Programme’ the four hundred plus million population that is still unbanked. The State Bank of India with over sixteen thousand four hundred plus branches have taken up this challenge pioneering an ‘SBI Tiny no frills account’ for the urban slum communities & Rural India. This account needs no ‘KYC’ documents, and can be opened with a zero balance, one can deposit or withdraw from Rs.10/- to Rs.10,000/- the upper limit for this account is Rs.50,000/-. They have loan schemes for various items for the rural farmers and urban slum based persons.
The SBI Tiny facilitates the local poor NGOs to become Customer Service Providers (CSPs) that works like a local branch at each slum dweller/villagers’ doorstep in the community. The NGO get some percentage benefits as well as it helps their socio-economic empowerment objectives. One of the future benefits of this scheme is the RBI is making this data base for the (Unique Identity Number) UID scheme of the Government of India.
Don Bosco Rehabilitation and Research, Matunga (R&D) has been vigoursly promoting this scheme to various poor NGOs in Rural areas, Out of our institutions ex-street boys and urban slum communities. The R&D has promoted its outreach for such savings to over one million marginalized in various communities of Maharashtra.
The R&D has conducted various training workshops in rural Maharashtra; viz. Yewla, Nagar, Amravati, Beed, Lonavla, Pune and has now opened networking with social action NGOs in Jharkhand and Uttaranchal. This unique scheme envisions covering as many of the poor unbanked population in the country