New Delhi, Aug 27: inance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday that a total of 53.13 crore Jan Dhan accounts for the poor have been opened in the last 10 years with deposits worth Rs 2.3 lakh crore.

Talking to reporters on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Sitharaman said, "Our target is to open more than 3 crore PMJDY accounts during the current financial year."

She said that the PMJDY is one of the biggest financial inclusion initiatives in the world.

The Finance Minister said that the average bank balance per account in March 2015 was Rs 1,065, which has now increased to Rs 4,352. Around 80 per cent of the accounts are active, she added.

As many as 66.6 per cent of Jan Dhan accounts are opened in rural and semi-urban areas 29.56 crore (55.6 per cent) belong to women account holders.

Sitharaman said: “PMJDY accounts are used on a large scale. People also deposit money in it. However, this scheme allows zero balance accounts and only 8.4 per cent of the accounts have zero balance.”

When the Modi government first came to power about 10 years ago, it had set a target of providing financial and banking services to every citizen. For this, zero-balance bank accounts were opened in the banks of the poorest of the poor under ‘Pradhanmantri Jan Dhan Yojana’ launched on August 28, 2014.

From MNREGA salaries to Ujjwala scheme subsidy and providing money to common people during COVID-19, this scheme has played a major role in the success of the Modi government. Today, after 10 years, billions of rupees of common people have been deposited in these accounts, she added.

The Finance Minister said as of August 14, 2024, there were more than 173 crore operative CASA (current and savings) accounts in the country, including over 53 crore operative PMJDY accounts.

She said that a large number of normal savings bank accounts are also opened by banks, adding that new measures like e-KYC and video KYC have made the account opening process paperless, eliminating the need to visit a branch or banking correspondent to open a bank account.

"We believe that most of the adults in the country have been covered with bank accounts and our focus is to cover leftover adults and neo-adults," Sitharaman said.

The JAM Trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) has given a boost to the DBT programme and expanded its coverage from partial to ubiquitous, the finance ministry said and added the PMJDY scheme has done very well in rural/semi-urban areas of the country.

Today, 99.95 per cent of all inhabited villages have access to banking facilities within a 5-km radius through banking touch points (including bank branches, ATMs, banking correspondents (BCs), and Indian Post Payment Banks), according to a finance ministry statement. (IANS)

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