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'Mobile phone can accelerate inclusive growth'

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Though India has witnessed sustainable growth over the last few years, the development is yet to reach many parts of the country, said R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India.

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While speaking at a symposium, 'Mobile services for financial inclusion', organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India here today, he said mobile telephony can play an important role in accelerating the agenda of government for inclusive growth.

“Our country has witnessed phenomenal and sustainable growth over the last few years. But the incident in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra where several policemen were killed yesterday shows that the development has not taken place for all of India. Still there are people who are bereft of this development,” said Chandrashekhar.

He pointed out that there are large number of payments that the government has to make and to large number of people. The government has tried various ways but still need to come up with a simple mechanism so that the payment made by it should reach to the people and more importantly rural masses.

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“The Government started paying beneficiaries directly through cash but that system had various discrepancy. Later on it took the bank route but then the system was still complex and could not include people in villages. The RBI has also came with many recommendation like banking correspondents, no-frills account, post offices and others but they have not succeeded so far.”

Chandrashekhar said mobile service providers and other stakeholders can come up with some kind of innovation that can make government payment simple and accessible even for rural masses.

He said mobile penetration in rural areas is 20 per cent and this can be increased by clubbing mobile telephony with services like financial services. Chandrasekhar mentioned that financial services through mobile telephony can be started without any additional legislation.

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“If require then in future and based on the circumstances we can come up with some regulations but at the moment the existing regulatory framework is enough for managing financial services through mobile phones.”

Later he told CIOL that the Department of Information Technology will make presentation on leveraging the benefit of mobile phone for financial services in the meeting of Cabinet Secretaries and regulators on October 22.

“There is fare amount of discussion in government on using mobile telephony for financial services. DIT has prepared a paper on using mobile telephony for financial services. We will make presentation before the Cabinet Secretary in the upcoming meet of secretaries and regulators on this October 22.”

Addressing the function, Sanjay Swamy, chief executive officer of mCheck commented, “Mobile is a safest platform for financial transactions. At the backend, extremely robust technology takes care of the financial transactions. All is required is to have a well guided awareness strategy at the end user level.”

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