Post offices to enter into Core Banking System by March 2010

Post offices will no more limit their banking system to old and traditional technology
and would adopt Core Banking System, on pattern of other commercial banks by the end of current financial year.

"All branches of post office banks will be connected through national computer server for which data scanning and signatures entry was nearing completion", PR Kumar, chief
postmaster general, Punjab & Union Territory (Chandigarh) told reporters here today.
       
At present there were 150 lakh branches with the deposits of Rs5.60 lakh crore of deposits, Kumar said claiming that no other government organisation could match
such a huge customer network.

"The deposits in post office banks are not being used for any commercial purposes like extending loans to people and all the deposits were being utilised by the government of India for welfare schemes only", Kumar said while revealing the differentiation between the commercial banks and post offices.

Apart from the banking sector, the postal department would emphasise on insurance sector especially in rural areas, Kumar said adding that within one year it has been targeted that over two lakh policies would be issued in Punjab only to reach the number of two crore policies at national level by March 2010. Kumar said that the department has established its business development wing and several more services like issuing railway  tickets, collecting passport applications were included and very soon even the air ticketing would also be included in the list of postal services.
 
"Recently we have tied up with Punjab University Chandigarh to provide the services of selling the university's prospects, depositing of students' fee in any of POs", Kumar said revealing that such kind of tie ups were in pipeline with other universities as well.

To strengthen its cargo service, the department has recently purchased three cargo aircrafts apart from one already owned aircraft and an experiment was successfully conducted to dispatch heavy parcels from Ludhiana to Kolkata within 24 hours, which can not be done by any other courier service of the country.

Even the State Bank of India (SBI), largest nationalised bank of the country recently tied up with the postal Department to conduct operation on its behalf in the far flung rural areas, he said.

Kumar said that even the private banks like ICICI, UTI, IDBI have approached the  department for tie up for some of their services in rural areas.