Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that a high rate of economic growth is necessary to pull people out of poverty and to improve quality of life.
Jaitley was addressing the 25th World Congress of Savings and Retail Banks here in the national capital.
“Economies like ours need a high rate of growth. We want to use growth as a mechanism to pull the maximum number of people out of poverty, improve upon quality of life, but we are conscious of the fact that dangers of development and progress benefiting a few and leaving many others out of inclusion system are also there,” he said.
He also said an aspirational society cannot wait indefinitely for the benefits of growth to improve the quality of life of the poor.
He said that the ultimate objective of Jan Dhan, the government’s financial inclusion programme, was to bank the unbanked, secure the unsecured, fund the unfunded and service the unserviced areas.
Banks, especially public sector banks, opened 33 crore accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in a few months, he said.
Initially, people said they had no money to put in the account and it was zero balance accounts and gradually people started putting in money.
An overdraft facility was provided to incentive them, he said.
The government offered insurance at very affordable premium as part of the social security system through the PMJDY account to the uninsured and unpensioned, he said. “As many as 14.1 crore people have been enrolled under accident insurance while 5.5 crore have availed life insurance under the scheme,” he said.
