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Centre’s tight fist makes ATMs go dry in Telangana
Currency woes will continue as the Union government has declined the Telangana government’s plea for the supply of currency notes to meet the demand in the state and has asked the government to promote digital transactions.
Hyderabad: Currency woes will continue as the Union government has declined the Telangana government’s plea for the supply of currency notes to meet the demand in the state and has asked the government to promote digital transactions.
To monitor closely the progress in the digital transactions, the Union Cabinet Secretary asked the state Chief Secretary SP Singh to submit monthly report on the achievements in the e-cash facility provided to people.
Top officials of the state Finance Department told The Hans India that the RBI had clarified that currency supply has been stopped under the instructions of the Union Finance ministry. It may be mentioned here that after the restrictions on cash withdrawal limits were lifted in February, ATMs and banks started facing cash crunch and at most of the places they have gone dry just as it happened immediately after the announcement of demonetisation on November 8 last year.
With no other option to address currency woes and on the instructions of the Centre, the state government had then prepared an action plan to encourage people towards adopting digital money transactions.
As most of the people used debit cards, the government asked the commercial establishments to equip themselves with PoS (Point of Sale) machines. At present, 51,400 PoS machines were being used in the state.
The total number of registered commercial establishment are 2.33 lakh in the state, the official said private agencies were roped in for the supply required machines. The total number of saving bank account holders with debit cards is 4.3 crore in Telangana. After the demonetisation, the total transaction done through PoS machines was Rs 6000 crore.
Similarly, the government has taken up a big drive to promote AEPC (Aadhaar Enabled Payment Services). So far, Rs 188-crore worth transactions was only done in the state. The other modes of digital transactions like - UPI (Unified Payment Interface) and USSD (Unstructured Supplimentary Srvice Data) would also be encouraged. The total number of customers registered under UPI and USSD were 39,203 and 2.91 lakh respectively.
Following the latest instructions from the Centre, Aadhaar seeding under NREGP (Rural Employement Gurantee programme) would be put on fast track, officials said. Already about 93 per cent of Aadhaar seeding has been completed and now it would try to achieve 100 per cent at the earliest.
The total number of bank account holders under the scheme is 21.31 lakh.Similarly, Aadhaar seeding for the account holders under PMJDY (Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana ) scheme would be increased to 85 per cent from the present 80 per cent. The total number of account-holders under the scheme are 88 lakh in the state.
Officials said a meeting with all banks is being convened this month to seek their assistance to achieve 100 per cent digital cash transactions by the end of this year.
