ASBM National Conclave on Banking & Financial Services
‘India Laggard in Implementing ‘Financial Inclusion’ Plan- Experts
Bhubaneswar: The National Conclave on Banking and Financial Services – 2012 on the theme ‘Banking and Financial Services in India-The Changing Contours’ was held at Asian School of Business Management (ASBM) here on Saturday.
Chief Guest on the occasion, Ms. Gargi Kaul, Principal Accountant General, Odisha said, “India is still a way behind other countries to fully implement the Financial Inclusion Plan and a meager 20 per cent of the population of the country is covered by Life-Insurance and 9.6 per cent in other insurance schemes, which need to be improved.”
Guest of eminence on the occasion, Praveen Gupta, CGM SBI, Bhubaneswar Circle said, “The Banking & Financial services sector in India has seen a rapid change over the years. The ‘Alternate Channel Banking’ system is helping customers by saving their time through Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, ATMs, Service Kiosks, which is made possible due to application of upgraded technology.”
However, Financial Inclusion remained a key challenge for the sector, as still 6 lakhs villages are deprived of banking facilities yet in the country; we have covered around 73,000 villages under financial inclusion plan in between 2010 to 2012, Gupta added.
Speaking about the ‘Direct Cash Transfer’ scheme, which covers 51 districts in the country, Gupta expressed reservation of Odisha not being a part of it.
As Imports, Exports and Services sector combinedly contributes around 55% to country’s GDP, hence India will bear the brunt of global economic change in future, Gupta said.
Giving his welcome address on the occasion, Prof. Biswajeet Pattanayak, Director ASBM said, “Indian Banking system has witnessed tremendous growth since the era of liberalization started way back in 1990. Despite subdued global economic environment looming large across the continent, the Banking and Financial services sector here in India remained insulated and has withstood the financial turmoil in the past, thereby striding ahead in the global map.”
Prof. S Srinivasan, of IIT Kharagpur went on to add that, “Technological advances plays a greater role in shaping the Banking & Financial services sector of our country. “Above all, there ought to be a ‘Balanced Monitoring and Control system’ to be put in place to check the financial fraud,” Srinivasan said.
The inaugural meeting was followed by technical sessions on ‘Banking’ and ‘Financial Services’ in which. Prof. N C Kar from Dept. of Business Administration, Utkal University, Suresh Chandra Sarangi, Zonal Head, Bank of India, Ashutosh Rath, AVP, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bibhu Prasanna Parija, Insurance Ombudsman, Bhubaneswar, Deepak Gupta, Group Head- HR, Karvy and Prasanta Kumar Mishra, VP, UTI Mutual Fund threw light on the subject.