Ushering financial stability as well as generating a huge deposit amount for those who cannot afford it, the government’s flagship financial inclusion programme — Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) — has crossed the Rs 30,000 crore mark, as per official records.
The 20.38 crore bank accounts, which were opened under the PMJDY, as on January 20, have garnered deposits of Rs 30,638.29 crore (about USD 4.5 billion), according to the available data.
The accounts, opened under PMJDY are Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts (BSBDA), which can be zero-balance accounts, as per RBI guidelines.
According to the official records available, the percentage of accounts with ‘Zero Balance’ have shown a significant decline. Accounts with no balance were as high as 76.81 per cent of the total opened under the scheme as on September 30, 2015. They have come down to just about 32 per cent at the end of December.
The Finance Ministry data further showed that 8.74 crore of the accounts were seeded with Aadhaar and 17.14 crore account holders were issued RuPay cards. The data further revealed that as on January 15, banks had offered 53.54 lakh account holders over-draft facility of which the sanction was issued for 27.56 lakh cases and 12.32 lakh account holders availed it.
