Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to Review the Progress of India Post

NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is likely to undertake a review of India Post on April 14 regarding action taken by the department for setting up its payments bank.

According to sources, PMO will also take stock of progress made by Department of Post (DoP) to improve functioning through initiatives like e-commerce and IT modernization.

The Public Investment Board (PIB) has already approved the Rs 800-crore proposal from India Post for setting up a payments bank and after the PMO review, it will be sent to the Cabinet for final approval.

"Top officials of DoP will brief PMO about the progress made so far by the department in improving efficiency and what is the latest update regarding the payments bank," a source said. 

The meeting with PMO is likely to take place on April 14, the source added.

The PMO is monitoring the progress made by DoP to improve its functioning and utilizing the vast network of post offices across the country for financial inclusion.

Earlier this year also, PMO had taken a review of DoP with special focus on the implementation of proposals submitted by a task force on leveraging the department's post office network.

India Post has selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up a payments bank.

The India Post payments bank will primarily target unbanked and under-banked customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas, with a focus on providing simple deposit products and money remittance services.

The pilot for the payments bank is set to start from January 2017 and the full-fledged operations may start by March.

As many as 40 international financial conglomerates including World Bank and Barclays have shown interest to partner the postal department for setting up the bank.

For strengthening the e-commerce infrastructure, DoP has set up 57 new state-of-the-art parcel centres across the country through which more than 400 e-commerce companies are being serviced.

Source : Economictimes