After business correspondents, the next phase of financial inclusion seems to be establishment of ultra-small branches.
Presenting the Union Budget 2012-13 on Friday, the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said that ‘swabhimaan’ campaign was launched in 2010-11 to extend banking facilities through business correspondents to habitations having a population in excess of 2,000.
Of the 73,000 habitations identified to be covered by March 2012 under this, about 70,000 have been provided with banking facilities.
With this, over 2.55 crore beneficiary accounts would have been operationalised, he said, expressing hopes that the remaining habitations are likely to be covered by March 31, 2012.
“As a next step, ultra-small branches are being set up at these habitations where the business correspondents would deal with cash transactions,” he said.
He also said that the Government wants to extend the ‘swabhimaan’ campaign to habitations with a population of more than 1,000 in the north-eastern and hilly states and to other habitations which have crossed a population of 2,000 as per Census 2011.