Punjab National Bank (PNB) aims at bringing one lakh rickshaw pullers under banking net from 100 cities of northern India. The bank has already entered into an agreement with the American India Foundation (AIF), a not-for-profit organisation leveraging people and resources in the United States for development in India, to make credit facility available to NGOs working in the sphere of livelihood promotion and generation.
This MoU will enable informal sector workers like rickshaw pullers to avail loans. PNB will finance the loan and will sell insurance products to Rickshaw pullers.
Talking to FE, K C Chakrabarty, CMD of PNB, ?There are currently estimated to be 8 million rickshaw pullers in India and around six members of family are dependent on a rickshaw puller. Around 90% of them don?t own the rickshaw and they take it on rent to earn their livelihood. To improve their living standard, this project has been launched. We have also found there is need to manufacture more rickshaws so that these pullers could own one. To solve this problem we are in talks with companies like Hero Cycles and Avon cycles so they could manufacture rickshaws?.
Apart from this, PNB launched its ninth Financial Inclusion Pilot Project (Rural) with IT enabled Biometric Smart Card based banking, in Sirhind, district Fatehgarh Sahib on Friday.
PNB is intending to cover 15 crore by 2013 under financial inclusion in the country in general and Indo Gangetic plain in particular where the bank has major presence — in 13 states of Indo Gangetic plain. The financial inclusion project will be a holistic approach of providing basic financial services to the hitherto unbanked, poor people preferably at their door step with the help of smart card and biometric enabled technology alongwith arrangements will be made for effective training facilities and financial literacy.
Under IT enabled financial inclusion, the bank has identified 27 pilot projects (20 in rural areas and 7 in urban areas) to be launched across 13 states in Indo-Gangetic belt. Out of 20 rural pilot projects, 8 pilot projects have already been launched at Neemrana, Rajasthan, Tineri Panchayat, Patna(Bihar), Matki Jharoli, Saharanpur(UP),Gararu, Distt. Gaya(Bihar), Mauli Jagran in UT, Chandigarh, Kullu(HP), Ranchi, Jharkhand and RaiBareily(UT).