Jan Dhan: banks asked to set up ₹75-cr corpus for media campaign

Public sector banks have been asked to pick up the tab on media campaign expenses incurred for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the flagship programme of the Modi-led Government.

The Department of Financial Services (DFS) in the Finance Ministry has advised the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) to create a corpus of ₹75 crore to meet all the media campaign expenses for the scheme, sources in the banking industry said.

IBA has, in turn, approached its member banks seeking an initial aggregate contribution of ₹30 crore for the expenses already incurred and also expected to be spent shortly.

While public sector banks would have little option but to cough up money towards this corpus, indications are that private and foreign banks are keen to escape

The DFS has also urged NABARD, Life Insurance Corporation, General Insurance Corporation and pension regulator PFRDA to contribute (₹15 crore) towards the corpus.

The PMJDY — which was launched on August 28 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — targets to bring financial inclusion to atleast 7.5 crore unbanked families by January 26 next year.

The effort will be to ensure that atleast one person from every household in the country has a bank account in his/her name by January 26.

Meanwhile, IBA’s managing committee has now decided to focus the media campaign on ground level activities.

To ensure success of the campaign and to create a pull effect, the DFS had planned a nationwide campaign during the PMJDY programme period.

After calling for presentation from agencies empanelled with different banks, DFS had selected RK Swamy BBDO for carrying out the campaign in the initial stages for a period of one month covering pre-launch, launch and post-launch period.

The cost of this campaign carried out worked out to ₹20 crore, details available with DFS showed.

The DFS now wants the media campaign to be carried out during the rest of the programme also.